Florida Parents Drove 3.5 Hours to Evacuate with Baby; Why After Hours of Traffic, They Decided to Go Home (Exclusive)

• On Tuesday, Oct. 8, Sarah Lutzker and her husband decided to evacuate their apartment in St. Petersburg, Fla., with their cats and 15-month-old daughter
• After driving for three-and-a-half hours, the family realized they had minimal gas left in the tank, with no nearby gas stations open, so they turned around
• After an almost two-hour drive back to their apartment, Lutzker posted a video on TikTok explaining their situation, which has since garnered 6.4 million views. She and her family are safe following the storm
  

When Sarah Lutzker and her husband learned about the severity of Hurricane Milton, they decided to leave their apartment in St. Petersburg, Fla. On Tuesday, Oct. 8, they packed their car with essentials, including their cats and baby supplies for their 15-month-old daughter. After booking a hotel in Atlanta, they hit the road around noon for the seven-hour drive.

Although their GPS showed no traffic initially, that soon changed, and their car eventually came to a standstill in heavy congestion. After waiting for nearly four hours, Lutzker, 27, and her husband, Jeff, realized they had minimal gas left in the tank, with no nearby gas stations open.

"I remember us saying it's 135 miles home, or we keep going straight," Lutzker tells PEOPLE exclusively. "With so much traffic, we're still in the hurricane path. If we run out of gas, we'd be stranded somewhere unsafe, with no hotels available. So it was either push forward in search of gas or turn back home."

That’s when the family, who moved to Florida from Long Island, New York, just two months ago, decided the best option was to turn around and try to ride out the storm as safely as possible.

"It was scary," Lutzker says. "Deciding to turn back was tough. Packing everything made me think about all the things we might lose that we care about."

"I needed to call my mom because she tends to worry, and I wanted her advice," she adds. "But honestly, there was no good advice she could offer; it was just a tough situation with no clear solution. So we looked at each other and said, 'This sucks, but we'll do everything we can to be okay.' "

After a one hour and 45 minute drive back to their apartment, Lutzker posted a video on TikTok explaining their situation; the clip has since garnered 6.4 million views. Reading through the more than 9,000 comments, she expressed how meaningful it is to receive good thoughts and prayers from people.

"And then there are some comments saying, 'You're going to die,' and I'm like, I really don’t want that negativity," she says. "So I just delete those. Then you have people criticizing our decisions, saying we should have left earlier or done things differently."

She continues, "It's frustrating because they don't understand our situation. They claim we weren’t prepared enough, but honestly, it’s hard to prepare with limited resources and time. We're not lifelong Floridians used to hurricane season. We're doing the best we can — just give us a break!"

She adds that their area wasn't under mandatory evacuation since they are about one mile inland from Tampa Bay. It was more of a decision they made to try to leave, although their apartment complex sent out an email urging residents to evacuate.

"I don't think we left too late. It’s not a decision that could have been made earlier, especially since it really wasn't a Category 5 yet. The airport closed at 9:00 a.m. yesterday morning. It’s not like we could have just hopped on a flight, and even then, the flight prices were thousands of dollars for one seat. I keep saying it’s truly a privilege to be able to evacuate at all. My family and I had the means to do so, but not everyone is as fortunate."

After the hurricane made landfall Wednesday night, Lutzker shared some updates on TikTok. In her most recent post, she showed how she could see the damaged roof of Tropicana Field from her apartment.

"I love St. Petersburg for its parks and waterfront walks, but after the Hurricane Helene, the parks were completely devastated — there were boats on land, and some were just demolished," Lutzker says. "I think this experience may show us that settling down here permanently, especially buying a house, might not be the best idea."

On Thursday morning, PEOPLE made contact with Lutzker, who shared that "All is good. Definitely some damage in St. Pete but my family is safe and we don't have water but we do have electricity."