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ESF Graduate Student Helps with Hurricane Ian Aftermath
After spending two weeks working with the American Red Cross disaster relief services near Fort Myers, Florida, Madeline Clark knows the difference between classroom lectures and what happens in the field.
"Situations are never as black and white as you think they are in a classroom," said Clark, a graduate student in the Department of Environmental Studies.
Hurricane Ian made landfall at Fort Myers as a Category 4 hurricane on Sept. 28. Clark, an employee with AmeriCorps, was deployed with the Red Cross Sept. 29. She works in disaster cycle services which helps people recover after natural disasters, house fires, and floods.
Clark graduated from ESF in 2015 with a bachelor's in environmental fisheries biology and worked in several laboratories following graduation, but during the early months of the pandemic found herself wanting a change.
"During COVID, I got pretty burned out and wanted to try something new," she said. She left her laboratory job, took a gap year to join AmeriCorps and was assigned to Red Cross and found it aligned with her views as a climate change advocate.
"Trying to figure out how I can help prepare people for large-scale change to our ecosystem through climate change interested me," she said. "When I heard the Red Cross has efforts in community resiliency and educating people about climate change, I thought it was a good fit."
Clark returned to ESF this fall to pursue her master's degree concentrating on environmental policy. With her advisor Paul Hirsch, she is working on a master's project that includes interviewing people who have experienced large-scale disasters as a youth to learn how the disasters impacted them moving into adulthood.
"I thought that would be interesting to hear," she said, "and then we can better learn how to protect youth and at-risk populations."
Her work with the Red Cross and her master's project also allows her to channel her energy in a purposeful direction.
"For a long time, I was pretty anxious around the topic of climate change," she said. "It was a big scary thing, and I got to a point where I was like, 'You know what? I need to stop. Anxiety doesn't get me anywhere, so how can I put that energy to use?'"
From there, she turned to disaster relief. "This is how I can take all that anxiety and all this knowledge and put it towards building resilient communities that can withstand traumatic events."
At this point, Clark doesn't have specific answers on how to build resilient communities in the face of a large-scale disaster.
"I thought I did until I got down there. What we do with our shelter is provide a stop-gap for people to come in and catch their breath, so they're not sleeping out of their car or in a gas station trying to figure out how to find food or water or shelter. So, you can take care of those things for them, and then they can focus on what comes next or even just immediate needs."
"The ESF community is very dedicated to their studies," said Clark, "but if you want to make a difference, think about how you can help organizations like the Red Cross. We are always in need of volunteers to send wherever they're needed. It's a simple mission – you go where you are needed. Think about volunteering in any way you can, whether that's donating time or money, or resources these people need. And I also think if the average ESF student wants to get experience with how environmental studies or something like that where the rubber meets the road, it's here. It's a little different than being in a classroom or a lecture hall. It's very different."