A Tampa Man Nicknamed Lt. Dan Decided to Wait Hurricane Milton out on a Boat

Around the news of Hurricane Milton, a number of stories popped up of people who had decided to wait the storm out in some pretty unusual ways. Caroline Calloway didn't leave her house, and another man nicknamed Lt. Dan decided to wait out the hurricane on a boat.

The man, whose real name is Joseph Malinowski, refused to leave the sailboat he was living in during the storm and went viral on TikTok as a result. His nickname comes from the fact that, like the character in Forrest Gump, he refused to leave his boat during a storm and only has one leg. Now, many want to know whether Lt. Dan survived the storm in one piece.

NewsNation's Brian Entin went to track down Joseph following the storm, and he reportedly said, “I’m fine" after the hurricane swept through the area where his boat was.

“I’m not going anywhere because the safest place to be is on a boat in a flood,” Joseph explained of his initial rationale for staying on the boat. “We learned that with Noah. Everyone who stayed on land drowned. Noah and the animals lived."

Even after the area was under mandatory evacuation, Joseph still refused to leave, saying in one video: “You’re all robots. You’re all sheep, following the masses.”

During a press conference, Tampa Mayor Jane Castor said that Tampa police had rescued Joseph from his boat and that he had been taken to a shelter. By mid-afternoon, though, he was back on his boat.

In spite of his stubbornness, everything seems to have worked out OK for Joseph. Hurricane Milton was clearly a dangerous storm, and he was in one of the most dangerous areas, but he managed to get through it intact, and will likely feel vindicated, even though his survival likely had more to do with luck than anything he himself did.

Hurricane Milton first hit Florida late on Oct. 9 and weakened as it made its way across the state. 3.2 million people are currently without power in the area, and the storm is now expected to make its way up the coast and back out into the Atlantic Ocean as it continues weakening.

As the storm approached, there were also reports of tornadoes throughout the state of Florida, an unusual occurrence there. While it will take time to assess the full extent of the damage across Florida, massive evacuation orders were in place ahead of the storm that were designed to limit the impact on human beings in the region.

As the storm continues to weaken and eventually moves back out to the coast, the recovery effort will begin and will be a long process in and of itself. Lt. Dan managed to survive the wreckage of the storm, but there were millions of other people in its path whose lives have likely been upended by the devastation it left in its wake.