WILMINGTON, N.C. — The family knew that it would be dangerous to stay in their home in Wilmington, N.C., as Hurricane Florence roared into the Carolinas. But family members, the youngest of which was a few months old, came to a grim realization: They did not have the money to leave.

“Thursday night we were all sitting around laughing and playing board games,” Chyna Doughty, 21, said. “Everything was just fine.”

But on Friday as the storm moved inland, “we heard a loud crash and the entire house shook,” Ms. Doughty said. “My grandma, my sisters and I all ran out of the bedrooms. We had no clue what the crash was.”

A tree had fallen onto the house, killing her mother and her mother’s baby, Adam Johnson, who was 7 months old.