Not the video shot he was expecting, Anderson Cooper was smacked in the face with debris while doing live coverage of Hurricane Milton.
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The longtime CNN correspondent was reporting near the Manatee River in Bradenton, Florida, which is located just a few miles north of Siesta Key. “You could see it in the light there, [the wind] is just whipping off the Manatee River,” Cooper stated. “It’s coming in from the northeast and the water is really starting to pour over.”
However, as he continued to share more details about Hurricane Milton, Anderson Cooper was hit in the face by pieces of flying debris. “Woah!” he declared. “That wasn’t good. We’ll probably go inside shortly.”
He then carried on his report about the storm before the coverage abruptly ended.
CNN anchor Kaitlin Collins assured viewers that Anderson Cooper was safe as Hurricane Milton made landfall. “I do want to note for everyone watching who is very concerned obviously about all of our correspondents and anchors on the ground, Anderson is okay.”
Collins continued by stating, “Just obviously understandably difficult to establish a connection when you’re seeing what’s happening with the wind and the rain. And obviously the deteriorating conditions by the minute.”
After regaining its strength to be a Category 5, Hurricane Milton made landfall in the evening hours on Wednesday, Oct. 9 as a Category 3 near Siesta Key, Florida. The storm brought a life-threatening surge, extremely high winds, and flash flooding. Before the storm hit, tornadoes were reported throughout the state of Florida.
The storm was so strong that it took out the domed roof of Tropicana Stadium in Tampa Bay.
Hurricane Milton hit Florida less than two weeks after Hurricane Helene devastated numerous states.
Millions of Florida Residents Are Left Without Power Following Hurricane Milton
According to PowerOutage.us, more than 3.3 million people in Florida are without power as of 8:30 a.m. ET on Thursday, Oct. 10.
The outages were mainly reported along Florida’s Gulf Coast. Among those greatly impacted by the outages were Hardee County, with 9,000 customers without power, and Highland County, with nearly 90% of customers not able to use any electricity.
Manatee County had 700,000 reported outages while Sarasota County had nearly 300,000 outages.
Following the storm, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis stated the damage was “not the worst-case scenario.”
“What we can say is the storm was significant, but thankfully, this was not the worst-case scenario,” DeSantis said. “Isolated pockets of up to 18 inches of rainfall were observed in Pinellas and coastal Hillsborough counties.”