The area hit was under a hurricane warning for 24 hours and a hurricane watch for 36 hours, and neither was ever lifted.
The intention of NHC is everyone in a watch or warning preapare as if they will be hit directly by a hurricane, and those areas are selected based on NHC KNOWING how inaccurate they have been on track in the past. However, the interpretation of that by the media and emergency management is the problem.
I do recall a local meteorologist on early yesterday talking about how they had the warnings, but when the media and storm tracks predicted the path much further north, the evacuations were not pursued.
You cannot fault these people for not leaving when all the "talking" heads were telling them they were safe. Would I have left, yeah. But we aren't everyone.