Florida Student, 21, Goes Viral Documenting How She Sheltered on Campus from Hurricane Helene

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“I was alone so I was like, I mean, screw it. I’m going to put a vlog up and show people my air mattress and everything,” Layne Griffith says

stormyvloggyfromfsu/TikTok; Joe Raedle/Getty

Growing up in Florida, Layne Griffith has seen her share of serious weather — but something unexpected happened as Hurricane Helene barreled down on the state this week.

Griffith’s TikTok posts about sheltering from the storm, under @stormyvloggyfromfsu, went viral as tens and then hundreds of thousands of people began tuning into her video updates from the campus of Florida State University in Tallahassee, where the 21-year-old graduate student had holed up with her cat, Fig, in her office.

In an interview with PEOPLE early on Friday, Sept. 27, Griffith sounded surprised at the reaction, grateful that her city was not more damaged by the Category 4 hurricane … and more than a little playful about her moment of social media fame.

“I was trying to just make a TikTok for my friends,” she says. “They all went home or they went somewhere else and they were like, ‘Please vlog you about to die in Tallahassee. We want to see it on TikTok.’ “

Related: Teen Girl Was Stranded in Flooded Car by Hurricane Helene Until Deputies ‘Sprung into Action’ for Rescue: See Video

Courtesy of Layne Griffith

Layne Griffith

Among Griffith’s popular posts is a look at her temporary home, in her grad office on campus, complete with cat food and accessories, her own supplies and a bit of “decoration” — a whiteboard message in all-caps: “GO AWAY HELENE!”

“I was alone so I was like, I mean, screw it. I’m going to put a vlog up and show people my air mattress and everything,” she tells PEOPLE now.

She started vlogging on Wednesday, Sept. 25, and quickly gained attention, as she quips that Fig the cat “has been on national television three times in the last 24 hours.”

Griffith was raised in St. Petersburg, down the coast, and so “I’ve always been up to date with hurricanes and I’m always paying attention and we take them very seriously in my household, because we are not trying to be ‘Florida man with dog on roof.’ ”

“That’s why I’m studying what I’m studying,” says the master’s student in aquatic environmental science, “because I’m super interested in how the coast in Florida is changing and hurricanes have a huge deal of influence on what happens to our beaches.”

But as a lifelong Floridian, Griffith also can’t help but bring a bit of humor to the constant cycle of weathering dangerous and deadly weather.

“I’m trying to make light of this situation,” she says. “Some people online are not happy about my sarcasm.”

Griffith is also doing her part to help others — as when a concerned mom sent her a message on social media asking her to go check on the woman’s son’s house, she says.

Related: Hundreds of Florida College Students Are Sheltering on Campus Ahead of Hurricane Helene’s Landfall: ‘I Miss My Bed’

Joe Raedle/Getty

Water from the Gulf of Mexico floods a road as Hurricane Helene churns offshore on Sept. 26 in St. Pete Beach, Florida

“She sent me his address and then she’s like, ‘What’s your Venmo?’ And I told her, ‘You don’t need to send me a Venmo,’ and I checked on the house, said it was fine,” Griffith recalls.

“Students that live in houses specifically, I will absolutely go on my way to check on,” she says. “The apartment buildings are going to be fine — but houses, they’ve got trees.”

(As for that mom’s offer of Venmo, Griffith adds that it turned into a gift of “some beer money,” which “is so funny.”)

Helene had been forecast to bring potentially “catastrophic” weather to Florida’s Big Bend area and beyond once it made landfall late on Thursday, Sept. 26.

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As of Friday, at least 20 people have died, mostly in Georgia, according to officials. 

Griffith says that while Tallahassee seems somewhat spared, comparatively, back in St. Pete, ”They saw seven feet of water, seven and a half feet of water, and the entire beach is covered in five feet of sand right now. All the roads, everything, people’s houses are totaled. It’s horrible.”

Which is another important lesson she’s learned, she says: “We like to think that we’re super resilient here in Florida, but Florida is the most vulnerable coastal state to these things.”

“Every time you just get out of Dodge, you get out of way and you need to pay attention,” she says.

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