PLYMOUTH – Ellen Vaughn can’t get out of a car fast enough. The Asheville, North Carolina mother arrived in Plymouth, Massachusetts on Wednesday. She drove multiple children 900 miles to flee her neighborhood that was hit hard by Hurricane Helene. As she arrives, more supplies are being sent from the Bay State to North Carolina.
“I think I had 100 miles to empty in our minivan. We had limited information,” said Vaughn, who says they had to get updates by the radio in her car every morning at 10 a.m. “I am sitting there like, ‘I can leave, but if I run out of gas on the side of the road with three children in my car, which one is better?”
Vaughn says some people who fled the state didn’t find an open gas station until they got two states away. Her sister was able to get her gas at a Sam’s Club.
Even as her family passed the devastation, she says her children remained children and were oblivious to the chaos in view.