‘World’s worst influencer' refused to leave Florida home despite Hurricane Milton: Latest updates on her?

“So if you've been following Hurricane Milton, I'm going to die,” Caroline Calloway, dubbed the “world's worst influencer,” declared on her Instagram Story on Tuesday, October 8. The 32-year-old woman's loud and clear message made waves ahead of Hurricane Milton's landfall on the island of Siesta Key, Florida, as a Category 3 storm on Wednesday night. The dangerous tempest eventually weakened to a Category 1 as it moved over land, according to the National Hurricane Centre.

Despite the call for “mandatory evacuation," the Instagram ‘scammer’ refused to abandon her home in the Sunshine State. “It’s supposed to make landfall in the Sarasota-Bradenton area. I’m in Sarasota, I live on the water. It’s a zone A, mandatory evacuation,” she said on social media.

She then listed the various reasons fuelling her decision, “ I can't drive, first of all. Second of all, the airport is closed. Third of all, the last time I evacuated for a hurricane, I went to my mom's house in Northport for Hurricane Ian.”

Nevertheless, she admitted she was a “little concerned,” especially since she lives “right on the beach.” She detailed her past experience with evacuation and told her followers how her “whole street” was flooded and people in the area were “evacuated after three days without power or running water by the US military.”

Also read | How Florida's ‘Lieutenant Dan’ survived Hurricane Milton in his sailboat, ‘God told me to…’

“It was very traumatic and so I don't want to evacuate to my mom's house because the last time I did that, it was the worst time ever!”

Viral Instagram ‘scammer’ uses Hurricane Milton to promote her new book

Calloway reassured her followers that he and her cat were bracing themselves for the storm's impact as she was ready with “backup water” in a tub and had food as well. Although she didn't downplay the “scary” bits, she also went on to use the opportunity for a personal promotion stunt.

“It's about to come out if I survive! It's an advice book (winking emoji) Cute!!!!! <3,” the con artist wrote on X/Twitter while promoting her second book ‘Elizabeth Wurtzel and Caroline Calloway’s Guide to Life.’

In a follow-up tweet, she wrote: “I have champagne and four generations of Floridians in my veins. It’ll be fine.”

Nonetheless, many netizens didn't buy her narrative. Several people commented that her cat deserved better, while others speculated if she was back to her old “scamming” ways. “You guys she’s scamming no way she’s still there,” someone commented on her post.

Latest word on Caroline Calloway

Nine hours ago, the supposed author shared an update as a witness to the storm. “Currently in the eye of the storm. Here's a video from before and seconds later,” she wrote on X. Calloway further explained, “These are from my condo’s group chat. Ngl a 60 year old man named Todd shot better content of this storm than I did. Brb need to go check on some old ladies on the upper floors ?.” A bit later, she left another update on her Instagram Story: “No storm surge, but no power. Just took a bunch of meltonin to try to sleep with all this noise. Talk to you in the morning xo cc.”

In the meantime, Caroline Calloway also found the time to tell her side of the story in an interview with New York Magazine's Intelligencer.

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Instagram celebrity speaks out why she decided not to evacuate despite her home being in the ‘mandatory evacuation’ zone

Responding to her choice of actions and a viral tweet that said, “Caroline Calloway might actually die. She lives on the ground floor of a beachfront building in Sarasota and isn’t evacuating,” she told staff writer Matt Stieb, “never said I live on the ground floor. I live on the water, but I’m three stories up. Even with a 20-foot storm surge, I will not be seeing any of that. Second of all, I have never talked about this online, and I didn’t really intend to because it was rather traumatic. But I mentioned it in my Instagram story the other day, and now I feel very forced to go into greater detail.”

When asked why she was staying back instead of evacuating, she reiterated her experience with Hurricane Ian in 2022. “The scariest part was not our dwindling food supply or the insects, which were frankly terrifying when the entire surrounding land turned even swampier than it had been in rural Florida. I hope you never find out what was actually the scariest part, which was at night we’d hear gunshots. I still don’t know if it was just drunk Floridians exercising their Second Amendment rights on a homemade shooting range in their backyard to pass the time, or if it was something more sinister.”

Further articulating her “Hurricane Anxiety,” Calloway described evacuating as “choosing between so many terrible choices.”

“It’s like, okay, so we get evacuated here, but then we left up all of our neighbours. And also we’ll be what in a stuck in traffic. I can’t drive,” she continued. She also mulled over how she possibly wouldn't even have made it out of Florida in time. “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 neighbours, what do you choose? It’s all very difficult, and this is what I chose.”

She detailed her disaster plan: "We have hurricane-grade windows for up to 145 mph winds. We’ll be taping them, but we’re not boarding up. But our condo building is putting up a flood storm-surge gate, which is why we have that 7 p.m. cutoff.”

The Instagram influencer is believed to have stayed put in her Florida home with two friends and her mother due to “the safety structure of this building versus where they were leaving.”

When asked if there had been any direct contact from the county, she informed the outlet that Hollywood actress Emma Roberts had somehow contacted her and wisher her well.

The social media celebrity shot to fame while documenting her days as a student at the University of Cambridge in the early 2010s.