A longtime mobile home resident, Louise Daniels  of Naples, remembered the damage inflicted by Hurricane Andrew in 1992.  Following experts’ advice, she evacuated “tens of miles, not hundreds of miles” – in fact, only seven miles, and stayed with friends from church for a week.  Even only seven miles away from her home, storm damage at her evacuation location (a solidly built brick home) was much less severe. 

She only evacuated a short distance.  Wilma ripped the carport off her mobile home, “opening it up like a sardine can,” she says.  But her friends’ brick home “only had some trees down.”  Power soon returned, stores were opened, and she was nearby to check on things at her home.

At 80, she still drives, but is reluctant to evacuate a long distance.  “A hundred miles in my car?  No, no.  I hardly drive anymore – I do drive to the store and the doctor.  A hundred miles?  No.”