Social media was aghast at a handful of Floridians who chose to ignore evacuation orders and ride out Hurricane Milton in their homes this week.
One man, who has come to be known as “Lt. Dan,” went viral for his plans to ride out the massive storm in his sailboat. Meanwhile, social media influence Caroline Calloway shocked her followers by announcing she would be staying in her waterfront condo in Sarasota, Florida, just south of Tampa.
Joseph “Lt. Dan” Malinowski, who is missing his left leg, had a biblical explanation for his stubbornness.
“I’m not going anywhere because the safest place to be is on a boat in a flood,” told TikTok user Tampa Terrence. “We learned that with Noah. Everyone who stayed on land drowned. Noah and the animals lived.”
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Tampa police try to persuade a local resident, Joseph Malinowski, nicknamed “Lt. Dan,” who lives on a boat in Tampa, to leave Oct. 9, 2024, ahead of Hurricane Milton. Malinowski was confirmed to be safe on Oct. 10. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Malinowski refused multiple evacuation orders and even offers of assistance from neighbors. Tampa police chief Lee Bercaw gave him a visit ahead of the storm, but Malinowski insisted on staying in his sailboat.
News Nation reporter Brian Entin confirmed that Malinowski was alive and well aboard his sailboat after the storm. He posted a video of him calling out to “Lt. Dan” just before midnight on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Calloway joked on her Instagram story that the price of her books would go “WAY up” if she died in the storm.
“Order now,” she wrote.
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Influencer Caroline Calloway, seen here at the 11th Annual Shorty Awards on May 5, 2019, at PlayStation Theater in New York City. Calloway stayed at her home in Sarasota, Florida, during Hurricane Milton. (Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images for Shorty Awards)
Calloway explained her decision to ride out the storm in an interview with Intelligencer on Wednesday. She said she has been partly influenced by past bad experiences when trying to evacuate from hurricanes.
“My reasons for staying involve Hurricane Ian, which hit in 2022. I evacuated to my mom’s house in North Port. She lives very deep inland, but it’s very flat and I’m higher up, being three stories in the air than I was at her house. It was three days, no water, no electricity, no AC, which is a huge f****** problem in Florida in late summer, even early fall,” Calloway said.
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“The other 50 percent of the decision is because grandma moved into this condo building in the late ’70s. I’ve always been coming to Sarasota ever since I can remember to visit her. And as a result of that, we have a lot of family friends in the building who are very old. They’re all of my grandma’s friends that we just sort of inherited,” she added.
“My old friends — Ruth, Terry, Holly and her mom, Maryanne — are all staying, and someone needs to check on them,” Calloway said.
She went on to explain the logistical issues she and her family would have faced if they had tried to evacuate.
“It is just choosing between so many terrible choices. It’s like, okay, so we get evacuated here, but then we left up all of our neighbors. And also we’ll be stuck in traffic. I can’t drive. Remember, I spent my full last 20s either in England or in the West Village. I never got a license, so I would’ve had to wait until my mom came and got me to evacuate, which really would’ve put us behind on the traffic. So we’d be what in traffic in just a hotel that was also getting tropical. I doubt we could have made it out of the state of Florida in time, assuming that we wouldn’t have been able to leave until Tuesday morning, I think is probably the earliest she could have come and got me. So it’s just like what? We’d be somewhere else in the state in a less sturdy structure with less terrible weather, but without our neighbors, what do you choose? It’s all very difficult, and this is what I chose,” she told the outlet.
A drone image shows a flooded street due to Hurricane Milton in Siesta Key, Florida, on Oct. 10, 2024.
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Calloway has not posted an update to her Instagram in 11 hours as of Thursday morning.
