worried her roof might collapse. elizabeth, were you on the fence about whether or not you were going to evacuate. i was so afraid either way, i didn t know what to do. a lot of people have that idea that they can just wait and see what s going to happen. and that s the problem, because if they wait to see, we won t be able to help them. reporter: and it s not just seniors refusing to leave, going viral online, some florida residents adamant about riding out the storm. our family lives right outside of tampa and we have decided to hunker down. for the people who are not from florida, right, i ve got these big old windows. i don t know if they re going to hold up. reporter: but most are taking the warnings to heart. major roadways have been jammed for the last 24 hours and tampa s airport, completely shut down operations at 5:00 p.m. tuesday. reporter: it was nerve-racking. i literally got the last flight for the day. you re counting your lucky stars right now?
far? reporter: mika, joe, good morning. what we re seeing is the wind starting to pick up. we are in the bradenton area, just north of sarasota. and you can see that the wind is picking up here. this is the bay of sarasota. behind it is the gulf of mexico. we re seeing some movement there of the wind. i m going to tell you, just coming into where we are in this location, we re already seeing how there are a lot of areas that are boarded up. there are a lot of, quite frankly, homes that don t have any lights in them and no cars, so i would think that a lot of people took heed of the governor s warning and went to places closer inland. there are a lot of centers that have been opened up throughout the state. but especially in the west coast here. and a lot of people are going to it. we just drove up last night from miami and the way up here, on alligator alley, crossing up, and going up 75. you know, we were pretty much the only car heading up north,