An upstate New York native is among the millions of people who were ordered to evacuate in advance of Hurricane Irma.
St. John Fisher graduate Carol Austin left her Key Largo home Wednesday ahead of a mandatory evacuation order.
"The traffic was terrible, it was really terrible last night, it took us a long time to go a couple hundred miles. Gas was a little bit of a stress. We'd get off and try to find gas stations and some of the owners were outside and they're like 'There's no gas, I ran out four hours ago,'" she said.
Austin's husband flew to Buffalo while she took two children by car to Titusville, Florida Thursday, about halfway up the coast.
She says that 250 mile trip took about 8 hours, and ran into several of her friends from the Keys who were also moving northward.
She says one big worry shared by many residents in the Florida Keys is getting back to their homes after Irma.
"We're such a thin strip of land, and then access to that area is, you know, it gets tighter and tighter. We're one road in and one road out."
Austin says she's concerned about the school she had to leave behind, and is worried about when everyone can return to their homes and jobs.
"I also have young kids that are in school there, so it's a big decision that if it takes three weeks for us to get going again, that's a lot of education to miss," she said.
Austin is weighing the decision on whether to return to New York, where she has family, if the power is out in Florida for any length of time.