Hurricane Harvey and Irma have impacted Quincy University students.

Samuel Deleon is a senior volleyball player at Quincy University from Houston, Texas. Deleon and his family were one of the few fortunate enough to have not been seriously impacted by Hurricane Harvey.

“My neighborhood is a newer neighborhood that had a retention pond where the water goes around the (area),” Deleon said.

However, some of his family members and friends had flood damage.

“My sister’s house was located in the neighborhood that was severely flooded,” Sam also said, “Her whole first floor was (flooded), and she and her family were stuck on the second floor during the duration of the storm,” Deleon said.

Deleon also talked about how he handled himself while at QU during the time Harvey hit and how nerve-wrecking it was for him hoping for the best for his family.

“I had many friends at Houston who were on my Snapchat stories,” Deleon explained. “So looking at some of the damages on their stories, they were driving through some of the neighborhood that was devastated, and you can see some people’s stuff on the curb that was taller than me.”

Marissa Gonzalez said how the state of Texas was not prepared for the flooding in Houston.

Her hometown got some rain from Harvey even though it was about three and a half hours away from Houston.

Gonzalez, who is a junior at Quincy University, plays volleyball for the Hawks and is from a suburb that is on the northeast side of San Antonio.

“San Antonio is a cool part of Texas, and people forget about (San Antonio) when you think of Texas,” Gonzalez said. “The city is very diverse and it is a fun city with a lot going on. San Antonio has been more of the support for Houston, and I do not think anyone in Texas was prepared for the flooding that occurred.”

Gonzalez talks about what her family did to support Houston after the devastation.

“My dad went to the coast to volunteer there, and he helped clear debris and trash everywhere,” Gonzalez said.

Even though most of Gonzalez’s family was safe from Harvey, she recalled her family helping her aunt prepare for the hurricane because she lived on a coast near Houston.

“She stayed at my parent’s house in San Antonio during the storm, her house had damage, but it was not destroyed,” Gonzalez said.

A couple of weeks later after Hurricane Harvey hit Houston, Hurricane Irma came through the Atlantic Ocean and destroyed most of Florida.

Javon Washington, who plays football for QU, talks about his experience during the most recent hurricane and says it was not the first time he had experienced a hurricane.

“The worst I had been through was Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Wilma,” Washington said.

Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005 while Hurricane Wilma hit Florida two months after Katrina.

“I remember being without lights for at least a week and a half after Katrina,” Washington said.

Washington then recalled his experience with his brother during Hurricane Wilma.

“My brother and I lived in a four-bedroom house and converted a garage into a bedroom, and we put a wall up. Hurricane Wilma then blew that wall down, and I woke up being wet,” Washington says. “The only thing that kept it (the wall) from falling on me was the closet that we had built.”

Washington was born and raised in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and moved to Inverness, Florida his senior year of high school.

Washington’s famiy’s approach to Hurricane Irma was to treat it like any other hurricane they had experienced in the past.

“You have to get prepared like stocking up on water, canned food, and boarding up windows, it was like second nature to us,” Washington explained. “My grandmother lived in Inverness, and she had an electrical well pump and knew she was not going to have water, so what she did was buy big dumpsters to fill the water so that she can flush the toilet.”

While most of Florida’s power is now restored, his family’s home did not suffer as much damage, and they made it safely through the hurricane.