Sasha Kaun feels the pain of his Florida friends who have been hammered by four hurricanes in the past six weeks.
“It’s tough. It’s really tough. It’s crazy. Some people lose the roof of their house, or their whole house is gone and they have to rebuild the whole thing,” said Kaun, Kansas University’s freshman basketball center from Tomsk, Russia.
Kaun spent the past three years at Florida Air Academy in Melbourne, Fla. — a Space Coast city that has taken direct hits from two of Mother Nature’s monstrosities, Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne.
“I would like to be there to help, but I’m a little safer here,” Kaun said. “I’m not too excited to be in the middle of a hurricane right now. I’d try to get far, far away from it while helping. I’d help (people) to move.”
The good news is, all of Kaun’s friends are safe. He said damage at their homes was minimal -including shingles missing from the house of his girlfriend, Chantel, and leaks in the ceiling of his high school coach’s apartment. There has been no major damage to his high school.
The bad news is, Frances and Jeanne — storms Charley and Ivan only rained on Melbourne while they battered other parts of the Sunshine State — have inconvenienced Brevard County natives for nearly two months.
“My girlfriend and her family evacuated to Georgia (for Frances on Sept. 5), and everybody at my high school evacuated,” Kaun said. “That means you pay for hotels, food, gas. The power is out. It costs people a lot of money.”
Kaun never had to deal with hurricanes during his high school days. He came close to experiencing the wrath of Charley in mid-August during a visit to Florida after summer school let out at KU.
“I said, ‘Gosh, three years, no hurricanes … I come for a visit and here we go,'” said Kaun, who was relieved when Charley took a detour.
Oddly, Kaun has learned more about hurricanes in one semester at KU than during his years on hurricane alley.
“I didn’t even know what a hurricane is. I couldn’t figure out what it was in Russian until I took my geography class and found out it’s the same thing as typhoon,” said Kaun, currently studying climates in Geography 104 at KU.
My professor said they call it a typhoon when it comes close to the coast of Japan, a hurricane when it comes to the coast of America, and cyclone from the Indian Ocean.”
Kaun also has had scares due to possible tornadoes since arriving in Lawrence.
“We’ve had two good warnings,” he said. “One day last summer I heard the siren and it was like, ‘What might that be?'” Kaun said. “I looked outside and saw people walking around not panicking. I said, ‘It must not be serious’ and went back to bed.”
He said aside from mild earthquakes and “a lot of snow” there were no major irritations back in Tomsk. As far as Florida … fearless forecaster Kaun has a feeling the hurricanes are going to continue through November, the end of hurricane season.
“I think they are going to get hit again,” he said. “I’m pretty sure. It’s just my perspective. These things happen for a reason. I’m pretty sure something is driving those hurricanes. I’m not sure anything will stop them. It’s one after another, constant. They haven’t stopped yet.
“My girlfriend says this period is going to be about 10 years, the same amount (of hurricanes) every year. I don’t know if it’s pollution, warm water or what the deal is.”
Kaun says the future of Florida could be bleak if hurricanes continued to pepper the southeast.
“If it’s going to continue the way it, I’m pretty sure about 60 to 70 percent of the population would leave Florida. Nobody would take that risk,” Kaun said. “Florida is a great place to vacation. I like it there, but it is too humid for me. This weather (in Kansas) is the best thing that’s happened to me in the past three years.”