Sweeping the plains of Texas and news coverage everywhere, Hurricane Harvey has captivated the nation’s attention and fears.

Nursing junior Elena Lee hasn’t visited her home in Houston since before the start of the summer.

“At first, I didn’t think it was a big deal,” Lee said. “To be honest, every time it rains in Houston it gets flooded.”

She said she began to worry as she watched the news and saw posts on Facebook.

The National Guard has evacuated her parents’ house and she has kept in contact with her family daily.

“(My brother) told me to not worry about anything,” Lee said “I talked to my dad who said ‘everyone is fine.’ He’s very tough, so nothing tends to bother him.”

Lee said her parents and younger brother are living with her sister while they wait to see the damage of the house and what they can do.

Lee is studying abroad in Thailand and won’t be home until December.

“I feel bad that I’m here.” Lee said. “There’s nothing I can do except be there spiritually to help them and that’s hard.”

Junior Geology major Tyler Hamilton was in his hometown of Montgomery, Texas, during the hurricane.

“People panicked at the beginning by buying out all of the things at the grocery store,” Hamilton said.

He said news coverage of the impending hurricane caused panic to erupt.

“Then all of the gas in the Houston area was pretty much gone,” said Hamilton. “No food, no water, no ice, no gas.”

He said people who expected the hurricane to blow over were in for a shock as Harvey ended up being one of the most costly hurricanes in history.

“From the day it hit to the day it was all over it never stopped raining. Not once,” he said. “My house alone got roughly 37 inches of rain. The neighborhood where my grandparents live had houses that had water over their roofs.”

But one good thing to come from the disaster, Hamilton said, was that he saw his community come together like never before.

“People were literally risking their lives and swimming to people’s houses and cars to save them from drowning,” he said. “Truly unbelievable.”

Hamilton said he drove around after the hurricane calmed down to look at the damage it wrought.

“Thousand and thousands of people lost everything they had,” he said. “People escaped wearing only the clothes on their backs.”