It must have been terrifying riding out Andrew. But evacuation isn't always the solution either.
We live in St. Pete, last year when Charley was headed for "the mouth of Tampa Bay" (that's how the weather people put it), they issued evacuation orders.
My husband has to be at the EOC because of his job, and we're near the water (a few miles away), but our evacuation zone is D and we don't flood, so we just board up and stay put during a hurricane.
However, my parents who live about a mile from us, didn't want to deal with the storm (really they didn't want to deal with the after effects of a storm...no electricity, etc.), so they boarded a plane for my sister's in Georgia.
My MIL was in a retirement center, located on the bay, and they immediately transported all the residents to one of their centers inland in Sarasota.
So as it was, when Charley made that jog in at Port Charlotte, my MIL's "evacuation center" saw more weather than she would have seen at her place on the bay; my parents saw more weather in Georgia than they would have seen here; and we, who stayed, near the mouth of Tampa Bay didn't have much more than a strong breeze and a little rain to deal with.
No way of predicting, you just do what you feel is right.
Yes, very true.
As a kids in the early 60's, my brothers and I were once in the Bahamas with our parents. A hurricane was heading in from the south, so we hopped a plane to Fort Lauderdale to escape. The hurricane never hit the island we fled, just before what would have been landfall, it made a 90 degree left turn, causing landfall instead that night near Fort Lauderdale, where we rode it out in a motel anyway, despite our efforts at escape.
Our house in Miami is on relatively high ground, so surge will not be a problem, just wind damage. It would take extreme bad luck to get such a direct hit all over again, but these things still give me gray hairs, I think. 'Course I'm not sure which gray hairs I got from my wife and kids or which from worrying about storms!
Just kidding, I love my wife and kids.