Forensic anthropologist Ann Ross is worried about her freezer full of pig parts if Hurricane Florence cuts the power to her lab at North Carolina State University. “Oh my god, the smell... they will decompose, and it’s going to be a disgusting, soupy decomposition,” says Ross, who uses the pig pieces to investigate the marks that violence leaves on human bones. “That’s going to be horrible.”

Hurricane Florence is a Category 2 storm that’s on track to pummel the Carolinas and Mid-Atlantic region. It’s expected to bring life-threatening storm surges of up to 13 feet, dangerous winds, and what the National Hurricane Center calls “catastrophic flash flooding.”

“We’ve got some backup plans.”

That’s forced some researchers in the area to close up shop, as The Scientist first reported. Marine scientist David Eggleston, for example, is the director of NCSU’s Center for Marine Sciences and Technology, which looks out across the water of the Bogue Sound. He and his team have topped up the fuel in the lab’s backup generators, moved trucks and boats to higher ground, and retrieved expensive equipment that listens to the underwater activity of creatures off the coast, Eggleston told The Verge. At this point, all his students have left the area, he says.

When we spoke on Wednesday afternoon, Eggleston had stayed behind — at least, for the time being. He was working on sorting through samples of marine creatures that are stocked away in freezers. Some of these samples are key for active court cases about environmental contamination. He planned to load the most precious ones into coolers filled with dry ice and take them with him if he evacuates — which he thought he’d probably wind up doing. He was eyeing the gas stations’ fuel supplies as he prepared to go. “We’ve been trying to top off the tanks. I’ve got a few plastic gas cans filled with gas. We’ve got some backup plans,” he says.

Further inland, in the densely packed research hub bracketed by NCSU’s main campus in Raleigh, Duke University in Durham, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, heavy winds and rains are likely to bring flooding and power outages. “The main concern is the torrential, heavy rainfall,” says Scott Sharp, a senior forecaster at the National Weather Service in Raleigh. “We’re talking rainfall rates of an inch to possibly as high as one and a half inches per hour, for hours on end.”

Classes at the universities have been canceled. But some professors like Ross, the forensic anthropologist, have been hard at work hurricane-proofing their labs. Ross’ lab is lined with windows, and she’s concerned that if a stiff wind kicks up projectiles, the windows could shatter — making her lab accessible to the outside.

“Machetes and axes and all kinds of things.”

That’s a problem for a few reasons: for one thing, Ross has a wall full of weapons her team uses to compare cuts on bones. “Machetes and axes and all kinds of things that we use to assess what type of tool could have made what type of mark,” she says. She doesn’t want those flying around the lab in heavy winds. Plus, like Eggleston, Ross’ lab also contains evidence involved in court cases that she has to keep safe and secure. Only, for Ross, the samples are human bones that her lab is studying to help identify the victims of cold cases and characterize the trauma that left scars on the skeletons.

“Everybody needed to be locked up,” she says, referring to the remains, “because there’s an issue of chain of custody.” So her research group spent Tuesday ensuring that the machetes and axes, bones, and sensitive equipment, including a powerful microscope, were stored in locked portions of her lab. Now that everything is secure and her students are safely out of the area, Ross is looking ahead and wondering about power — her fridge that’s full of pig parts isn’t on a backup generator. “We’re all like, ‘Please don’t lose power,’ because it will be so gross.”

“Please don’t lose power” is a common refrain for researchers with precious and perishable materials packed away in freezers. Ross’ colleague Heather Patisaul, a professor and neurotoxicologist at NCSU, studies how chemicals like flame retardants or the infamous ingredient in plastics called BPA mess with developing brains. The rodent brains in her freezer, which stand in as models of human development, are key for that research, and they represent years of work. “For us to start over, it would take us months to even get started,” she says. Plus, it would take money that’s already been spent or would be difficult to replace.

Patisaul and her lab are having to make tough choices about which irreplaceable samples to move to the one freezer that’s on backup power. “So things that were required for someone’s dissertation to get finished, the tissue we need to complete funded projects with NIH [National Institutes of Health],” she says. She is also prepping a couple coolers full of dry ice — just in case she has to rush into the lab to save anything from thawing.

“It’s lost potential knowledge — but, of course, that’s less important than keeping all the students and everyone safe,” says Patisaul, who’s spent the time leading up to the hurricane making sure the people in her lab won’t be stranded weathering the storm in low-lying apartments. “We’ll be checking in on each other,” Patisaul says. “We will be texting, we will be calling, and we’ll be making sure that everyone’s good.”

“Science will go on if we lose everything in the freezer — we’ll make it.”

Nearby at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, veterinarians and animal husbandry staff will be staying on site to care for the other living beings on campus: research animals. Before the storm hits, the university is working to ensure that the animals have enough food, water, and bedding, according to Craig Fletcher, a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine and the associate vice chancellor of research. Key systems for keeping the animals healthy are also on backup power, he says: “Lighting, air conditioning, anything in terms of life support.” And during the storm, the veterinary staff will be “providing care around the clock.”

Now, with data backed up to the cloud, delicate electronics unplugged, and precious samples packed in the freezers that have the best shot of staying frozen, all that these scientists can do is wait. After all, there are only so many things you can control, Patisaul says. “Science will go on if we lose everything in the freezer — we’ll make it,” she says. “Other labs have gone through this. People in Houston obviously went through this last year. The show must go on.”