Mother Riding out Hurricane at Home With 5 Children Gives First Hand Account of Florence’s Power

A mother who is currently riding out Hurricane Florence at home with her five children has been giving a first hand account of the storms power.

ABC News reports that Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina native Melissa Cellucci told them that she and her kids have been hunkered down in their house while her EMT husband has been on lockdown at Hanover County Regional Medical Center.

“It’s crazy and frightening. We’ve been watching trees being torn down and our backyard fence get ripped apart all morning from the winds,” Cellucci said, describing what she’s seen the category storm due just around her own property.

“The whole back side [of the fence] is all demolished. I saw two 20-foot sections getting busted up because the winds are so strong and powerful,” she added.

When asked why they stayed at home to ride out the storm rather than evacuating, Cellucci said that her husband was the one to make the tough call.

“With having five kids and my husband’s stuck at work on standby for his job at the hospital it was just easier for us to stay at our home where we have all of our things,” she said.

“We have a safe place here at our home and a generator and we have supplies, so we felt that we could be safe here just riding it out,” Cellucci added.

She went to say that she did not start to get worried until about 3 a.m. when the power went out and she wasn’t able to get the generator restarted.

“When the wind picked up it got really spooky and scary,” Cellucci added. “I really didn’t get any sleep, I needed to be up in case anything happened.”

The mother-of-five went on to explain that she and her family have only ever been through one other hurricane, so the whole experience has been eye-opening.

“It’s kind of new to us what a hurricane would mean so our anxiety was high getting stuff ready,” she confessed, adding, “The rain’s really picked up, and just stepping outside a little bit ago the trees are really blowing and bending. We have large pine trees in our backyard, and they’re really bending a lot. The wind is howling away. I could hear it from inside the house.”

At this time, Hurricane Florence has been downgraded to a category one storm, but is still extremely dangerous, nonetheless.