A one-legged Florida man nicknamed “Lieutenant Dan,” who went viral for his refusal to evacuate before Hurricane Milton, has finally been coaxed into taking shelter.
“The Tampa Police Department, this morning, just saved Lieutenant Dan,” Tampa Mayor Jane Castor said in a press conference Wednesday afternoon — referring to the Tampa resident, real name Joseph Malinowski.
“He has been rescued, and he is now in a shelter as well. If we can get Lieutenant Dan to go to a shelter, we can get anybody to do that,” she said in an appeal to others in the Tampa area reluctant to seek refuge at one of the state’s shelters.
Gov. Ron DeSantis said at a press conference Wednesday that just 31,000 Floridians have so far holed up in shelters, despite the capacity for 200,000 residents.
Malinowski, who’s been nicknamed “Lieutenant Dan” — in a nod to Gary Sinise’s seafaring character in “Forrest Gump” — said he had planned on remaining on his boat.
In interviews, he likened himself to Noah and his ark.
“The safest place to be in a flood is on a boat. We learned that with Noah. Everyone that stayed on land drowned,” Malinowski told reporters after Tampa police persistently begged him to leave.
Malinowski claimed he was following the instructions his father used to give him about surviving a hurricane: “If the tide goes up, I go up. As long as the water stays out of the boat, I’ll be fine.”
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The mariner said he has faith that he will survive, and if he doesn’t, that’s God’s will.
“I’m not suicidal, but I’m putting it in God’s hands and taking it out of mine and man’s,” he told NewsNation reporter Brian Entin, peeking out from the cover of his boat.
Despite Castor’s claim that Malinowski had been evacuated, Entin subsequently contradicted her, reporting he was in fact still on his boat.
— Additional reporting by Chris Nesi