To the folks in the panhandle who are posting videos and expressing such amazement at the storm's intensity: they told you not to stay there!
There are a lot of reasons us natives, and other long-time residents, don't leave:
1. Those things can and will turn on a dime. You could be going in a direction you thought was going to be safe and all of a sudden find yourself directly in its path and where you were completely clear.
2. For people in south and central Florida anywhere you can go that is a place to reasonably believe you won't still have a hurricane screaming over the top of you is a 10+ hour drive. Yes, our state is that long. You would have to leave at least 2 days before the hurricane is forecast to hit, and as I pointed out above, hurricanes can make a lot of corrections in course in that amount of time.
3. For decades the local news stations have been hyping up the impending death and destruction with very little actual death and destruction.
4. Like Cyber said, we don't want the gov't keeping us from our homes only to let criminals go shopping in them.