People in Florida evacuating to the Carolinas ahead of Hurricane Milton

FLORENCE, S.C. ( QUEEN CITY NEWS ) — Millions of people are evacuating Florida ahead of Hurricane Milton, which could make landfall Wednesday night in the Tampa Bay area.

Some of those people are coming to the Carolinas for safety and it’s taking them a lot longer than usual to get here.

“What usually is a seven-hour trip took about 12 hours,” said Chandler Miers, who lives in Tampa and evacuated to South Carolina.

Video shot across the state of Florida shows cars bumper to bumper for hours, as thousands and thousands of people are trying to head north before Milton arrives

“For this one, we were hearing and seeing people who had lived in Tampa their entire lives, saying I’m not risking it with this one,” said Miers. “I’m getting out.”

Some Floridians are planning to ride out the storm…

“I think we’ll just tough it out,” said Martin Oakes, a Florida resident. “We got shutters up. The house is all ready.”

Others are getting out and coming to the Carolinas.

“We kind of just put as much stuff as we could in that one car and left what we didn’t care about as much,” said Miers.

Miers and his brother made it from Tampa to their family home in Florence, South Carolina, battling traffic and coming across a lot of gas pumps that were bagged along the way.

“Once we got past Ocala and through like the middle part of Florida, there was still no gas,” he said. “We made it all the way up. Jacksonville is when we finally were able to refill his tank.”

That’s about 200 miles without finding a gas station to refuel. Those with gas have lines stretching into the roads.

“A little aggravating,” said Stephanie Grover-Brock, as she waited in line for gas. “You’ve got to be patient and determined and just have grace.”

Beyond the frustrations, there’s fear.

“We decided to take pretty much everything that was important to us or valuable,” said Miers. “The stuff we couldn’t take, we put on like top shelves and, you know, high up in the closet and everything. Now we’re just hoping that all that stuff is not totally damaged when we get back.”

This could be the first direct hit by a hurricane for the Tampa Bay area in more than a century.

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