STUART, Fla. — About 160 U.S. citizens, including a family from Stuart, arrived in Tampa Friday morning following an evacuation flight from Israel.
Governor Ron DeSantis was there to welcome the passengers as they disembarked.
WATCH: Stuart woman says family had to shelter in middle of night
Among those aboard was Rebecca, a resident of Stuart, who traveled to Israel with her family for a celebration that quickly turned into a tense effort to escape an escalating conflict.
“We came for our nephew’s wedding,” Rebecca said.
Their trip took a frightening turn due to missile strikes stemming from the Israel-Iran conflict.
“We would have to go into the shelter in the middle of the night, and we would get these sirens out of a dead sleep. It was the scariest thing I’ve ever experienced in my entire life,” she recalled.
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Rebecca said it all began last Thursday.
“We got an alert that said that the U.S. families should stay in place in the greater Tel Aviv area,” she said.
For four nights, she and her family moved in and out of safe rooms, responding to warnings and blasts.
“It just kind of felt like a boom, boom, because we were inside the safe room, we have no windows,” she said. “It’s scary. I mean every time I hear a boom or beep or a glass drop, I freak out.”
With commercial flights increasingly difficult to secure, Rebecca connected with Florida state officials and Grey Bull Rescue, a group that coordinated with the state to organize evacuation efforts.
In a press conference Friday morning, Gov. DeSantis said so far they've been able to help over 1,500 people evacuate the country.
“Given that the airport is totally shut down, given that the neighboring areas aren’t exactly easy to navigate, this was probably the most challenging and logistically difficult mission that Florida Department of Emergency Management has done, certainly in my time,” said DeSantis.
Rebecca described a tense final morning in Israel as her family prepared to leave.
“On our way out, 8:30 in the morning, we’re packing up our cars and all of a sudden the siren goes off, so we had to run back into our hotel, got in our safe room, including our taxi driver, he came in too, and that’s when we heard the hardest one hit near us,” she said.
She said a missile struck just a half mile from their hotel just north of Tel Aviv. She recalled seeing a plume of smoke at the impact site as they left.
Now safely home, she expressed relief and gratitude that her family is back on U.S. soil.
She said, “to get them out just feels so amazing, to be home. Like I said, we’ve wept multiple times.”
