ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Courtney Marr counts herself among the lucky.

The Greece woman was able to catch a flight home to Rochester after the University of South Carolina shut down for the week in preparation for the arrival of Hurricane Florence.

"It was kind of scary, because I just randomly heard yesterday (about the hurricane's path)," Marr said. "I didn't know it was going to hit Columbia. I thought it was like, the coast."

"Thank God she got a flight now," said Jake Fess of Fairport, Marr's boyfriend. "Because if she had waited, it would have been way more dangerous."

Flights from Rochester to Charlotte also carried the first Red Cross volunteers into the storm zone. Seven flew down to prepare for the storm Tuesday.

"I'm available whenever they need," said Pete Conaccorso of Fairport, a retired RG&E power plant worker in his first year with the Red Cross. "I just want to help people out."

Bonaccorso answered the Red Cross call Tuesday morning. In his first year as a volunteer, he's already responded to the Virgin Islands, the Southern Tier, and even used his dirty laundry as a pillow during the hurricane flooding in Houston. He calls it more rewarding than his 37 years with the utility.

"When I was getting paychecks, it never felt that good as when I was volunteering to help these people out," Bonaccorso said.

 

 He and Debbie Thompson of Lima will drive a Red Cross emergency response vehicle 11 hours together to Raleigh, North Carolina. They will wait out the storm, projected to have catastrophic winds and up to 30 inches of rain across the Carolinas, and then head into impacted areas to deliver food, water and whatever else is needed. 

"There's gonna be a lot more need," Thompson said. "It's just means to be able to help. And that's what I want to do. To be able to help people wherever I can and whenever I can."

Both Pete and Debbie will be deployed for at least two weeks, part of a Rochester area response to this hurricane that has only just begun.