When Hurricane Lili hit Louisiana on October 3, many children in the state had their first encounter with a major storm system, and they weren't happy about it.
Denise Sellers, Ph.D., an assistant professor of pediatrics at Louisiana Sate University has found that the current weather in the Gulf has become an issue with children in therapy. "Nobody can tell [children] with any certainty what is going to happen," she says.
Hurricane Lili arrived in Louisiana just one week after Tropical Storm Isidore, touching down near the town of New Iberia with 92 miles per hour gusts. Only hours before landfall, Lili floated over the Gulf of Mexico as a class 4 hurricane with winds of 140 mile an hour. The day before the hurricane landed, not even meteorologists could predict how Hurricane Lili would act once it landed.
The children who visit Sellers' Baton Rouge office are stuck with questions but no answers: Am I going to be safe? Will the pets be all right? Are we safe? "They are looking to their parents and teachers and they are saying 'What's going to happen?' and the adults are saying 'I don't know.'"
