The impact of a storm that is 800 miles away can be felt in landlocked Bloomington, Indiana because of IU students with connections to those who were in it’s path.

At least 17 people have died, as of Oct. 13th, since Hurricane Michael made landfall in the Florida Panhandle on Wednesday. The record-breaking Category 4 storm hit Florida with 155 mile-per-hour winds. As of Oct. 13th, the storm had made its way back into the Atlantic ocean, but only after it ravaged Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia.

According to NPR, millions of people are still without electricity in the five states affected.

Peri Sede, an IU senior, has 9 friends who attend Florida State University, in Tallahassee, right in the epicenter of where the storm made landfall. As Michael hit land, only 3 of her friends had marked themselves safe.

“I’m really scared for them, I was checking on Facebook to see if they were all marked safe and some of them aren’t and I’m really scared for them,” Sedge said.

Her friends have all marked themselves safe since the storm hit. Like FSU senior Melanie Anthony, Sedge’s friends either fled the Panhandle or the state entirely in some cases.

Anthony had to pack up everything and leave the state after FSU canceled classes, and shut down the campus due to the hurricane. She said she was going to visit IU for homecoming anyway, and that the storm allowed her to come sooner.

“For a lot of people it’s pretty hectic,” Anthony said. “It’s really last minute because you don’t know about these things super far in advance so it was a matter of hours.”

Some, like her brother Thanasi, did not evacuate before the storm because initially students were told not to worry about the storm. Then, when the hurricane was upgraded to a Category 4, he had no way of evacuating because he had no car and all his friends had left FSU.

“He was the only person I know in Tallahassee, every single other person left,” Anthony said.

This storm comes in the same week that the UN announced that global temperatures could rise 1.5 Celsius by 2030 if climate change continues at this current rate. This could mean more hurricanes for states impacted by Michael because hurricanes need warm water to form.