The recommendation was clear for the residents of Tampa: they had to leave the area before the arrival of Hurricane Milton, which threatened to devastate the area this Wednesday. "If you decide to stay in the evacuation zone, you will die. This is literally catastrophic. And I can tell you without any dramatization that if you stay, you will die," warned the mayor of Tampa, Jane Castor.
However, there were some people who decided to cling to their properties and defy the hurricane. Joseph Malinowski was one of them. The man, who is missing a leg, lives on his boat in Tampa Bay and had stated that he would stay on it as the storm passed. "I'm not worried. This is nothing compared to what I've been through in my life. This doesn't scare me," said Malinowski, known in the area as Lieutenant Dan.
"The safest place to be in case of flooding is on a boat. We learned that from Noah. Everyone who stayed on land drowned," he argued to journalists after refusing to leave his boat despite the insistence of the authorities, as reported by El Universal.
Hours later, Jane Castor stated that Malinowski had been evacuated: "This morning, the Tampa Police Department just rescued Lieutenant Dan," she said at a press conference according to Times Now.
However, other media outlets have posted on social media images of the man, in good condition, on his boat after Hurricane Milton made landfall in Florida.
But Lieutenant Dan is not the only one who has remained in his home as Milton passed through. Some people have shared on their social media how they were preparing to withstand in their homes, including a woman who faced the challenge from a van on the beach.