In Estero, Fla., south of Fort Myers, Alexandra Pipitone decided not to take any chances.
When Hurricane Harvey hit Houston last month, four states away, her neighbors’ houses had flooded.
“We kept on watching the water creep up and up and up to the patio door,” she said.
She didn't want to stick around to see what Hurricane Irma might do to the townhouse her family has been renting for three months. So she and her husband packed up their Coleman stove, canned food and water and set a course for East Atlanta early Thursday morning with their 5-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son in tow.
The Pipitones are far from alone. People from across Florida and the Georgia coast are flocking to the metro Atlanta area and other parts of the state to ride out the storm.
They're people like Jessica Davila, a Savannah resident who stayed through Hurricane Matthew last year and didn't want to repeat the experience. Davila said after Matthew, she didn't have power for two weeks. There were downed trees everywhere. And she ran out of formula for her 4-month-old.
“It was very scary,” she said. “There was a lot of wind. The trailer was rocking.”
Davila planned to leave Friday night, with her husband and children, mom and step-dad, brother, niece and nephew all caravanning to Dublin, Ga. in three cars. Everywhere she had looked for hotel rooms was full, she said, but she thought she could find a place to stay there. She’s bringing a week’s worth of clothes, pictures and important papers.
“Not having a lot of money and having to leave everything we own behind, it’s stressful,” she said. “We don’t have no choice.”
For Eileen Smith, it’s a different experience. The Daytona Beach resident only decided to evacuate after her daughter, in Decatur, stepped up the pressure. As soon as the rain stops, she said, she’s going home.
“She just nagged and nagged and nagged. I couldn’t take it,” Smith said. “I think it’s silly, but it makes her happy.”
Smith said she lives in a “shack” near the Intracoastal Waterway, but expected her house to keep standing. She wouldn’t have minded spending a few nights in a shelter, she said.
Jan Lee Meyer is treating her evacuation from Tybee Island like a vacation. She plans to take the Braves up on their offer for free game tickets for evacuees, and is taking a friend who left with her to see Stone Mountain. On her way out of town, she bought a one-pound bag of Tybee Island shrimp, and was making shrimp and grits at her sister-in-law’s Covington home Saturday morning. Later in the week, she’ll visit her daughter in Atlanta.
In addition to important papers and photos, she brought a canoe paddle she made with her father when she was 15 years old and a 1903 scrapbook that had survived floods in Chicago. Her new kitten, Huck, and Tripod, a yellow-bellied turtle, also came with her.
Still, she was circumspect about the storm.
“Hopefully, there’ll be a home to go home to,” she said. “You never know, with all those trees. …You can’t be too safe.”
It took the Pipitones more than 15 hours to reach Atlanta, twice as long as normal. They mostly stayed off the highways, and said canned food, bottled water and gasoline were hard to come by before they left. They expect to be in East Atlanta for a week.
“When we get back, we have no idea what it’s going to be like,” Pipitone said.
Alex Gonzalez, who lives in St. Petersburg, Fla., decamped to Macon with his wife, their 4-month-old and two cats. When he left, one out of every four stations were out of gas. Gonzalez said he spent two days boarding up the windows in their home. He put mementos and photo albums in the dishwasher, hoping it would withstand the wind and rain.
“I literally did everything I could,” he said.
Still, Gonzalez said, he is anxious. His wife’s parents and siblings also live in St. Petersburg. When he talked to them Friday night, they still hadn’t decided whether to stay or go. Of his colleagues, he was the only one to take off work Friday to leave.
“I wish a lot of friends and family were more decisive,” he said. “They’ve changed their minds a lot.”
