Cristian Benavides / X
CV NEWS FEED // A homeless disabled man from Florida made national headlines before and after he survived Hurricane Milton on his boat in Tampa Bay as the storm made landfall on the state’s West Coast Wednesday night.
Joseph Malinowski, 54, of Tampa has only one leg and lives on the 20-foot sailboat where he remained during the hurricane. Per NBC News, Malinowski’s left leg was amputated after he was hit by a car as a teenager.
Less than two weeks before Milton hit, Malinowski had also survived the devastating Hurricane Helene on his boat.
Since last month, the middle-aged man has been prominently featured in the TikTok videos of Terrence Concannon, a college student who is known on the short-form video app as “Tampa Terrence.”
Malinowksi’s “the captain goes down with the ship” mentality earned him the nickname “Lieutenant Dan,” a character in the 1994 film “Forrest Gump.” The beloved fictional character, played by actor Gary Sinise, is also an amputee who survived a powerful hurricane on a small boat.
On Wednesday morning, the day of Milton’s landfall, NewsNation Senior National Correspondent Brian Entin shared a video of an impromptu interview he did with Malinowski on X (formerly Twitter). The video soon went viral.
“For everyone worried about ‘Lieutenant Dan’ – I just talked to him,” Entin wrote on the platform. “He says he is going to stay on his sailboat in the Tampa Bay.”
“Everybody’s worried about you,” Entin told Malinowski – who was inside his boat – in the video.
“Who’s worried about me?” the man known as “Lieutenant Dan” answered nonchalantly.
“It’s all over TikTok” Entin responded. “Are you going to be okay?”
“I’m going to be fine,” Malinowski replied. “I’m not going anywhere. The safest place to be is on a boat in a flood. We all learned that with Noah.”
“Everyone who stayed on land drowned,” Malinowski pointed out, referencing Genesis 7:22. “Noah and the animals lived. So, I’m fine.”
“Everybody wants me to get off the boat,” Malinowski said. He noted that his boat was tied to a concrete dock. “As long as the water stays out of the boat, I’ll be fine.”
“I’m putting it in God’s hands and taking it out of mine and man’s,” emphasized “Lieutenant Dan.”
Later in the video, Malinowski indicated that “God found me ten years ago and I found Him.”
Wednesday afternoon, Tampa Mayor Jane Castor said via a press conference that police had “rescued” Malinowski – whom she referred to by his popular nickname – and placed him in a hurricane shelter.
“If we can get Lieutenant Dan to go to a shelter, we can get anybody to do that,” Castor said.
However, right after the mayor’s announcement, Entin provided photographic evidence that the man was not in a shelter after all.
“I know the Mayor of Tampa just said in her press conference that Lieutenant Dan went to a shelter,” the journalist wrote on X in a post including a picture of Malinowski in his boat. “He didn’t, I’m standing right here.”
On Wednesday night, after Milton had struck, Entin found Malinowski still in his boat and apparently unharmed.
“Lieutenant Dan!” Entin called out multiple times. “Are you okay?”
The 54-year-old man then popped his head out of a small cavity in the boat. “I’m fine,” he answered.
“I think you made it through the worst of it,” the NewsNation correspondent told him.
“Right now I’m doing fine,” Malinowski said.
