Infamous author Caroline Calloway announced on Tuesday that she is not evacuating her home in Sarasota, Florida due to Hurricane Milton. The 32-year-old posted a video on her Instagram Story revealing that her home is “on the water” in “a zone A, mandatory evacuation” area, but she has opted not to leave. This goes against the advice of public safety officials, and both Calloway and her commenters agreed this was incredibly dangerous.
Hurricane Milton is a historic storm set to make landfall on Wednesday evening between Tampa and Sarasota. Calloway – author of the 2023 memoir Scammer and self-described “world’s worst influencer” – acknowledged all of this before explaining why she is staying put. She said: “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… Her whole street flooded and we were evacuated after three days without power or running water by the U.S. Military. 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!”
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Calloway said she intends to stay in her home alone with her cat. As far as emergency preparedness, she said she has filled the bathtub with “backup water,” and went on: “We have food but it’s kind of scary… I’ll keep you guys updated.” Calloway then posted a video where Tampa Bay Mayor Jane Castor addressed residents refusing to evacuate, saying: “you will die.”
Calloway later made a grim joke about her plans on X – formerly known as Twitter. She wrote: “For more great advice, buy my second book! It’s called Elizabeth Wurtzel and Caroline Calloway’s Guide to Life. It’s about to come out if I survive! It’s an advice book 😉 Cute!!!!! <3.”
Calloway gained a following as a social media celebrity starting in 2012, documenting her extravagant lifestyle at Cambridge University in England. She secured a book deal with Macmillan Publishers for her memoir in 2015, hiring a friend to co-write with her. In 2017, Calloway withdrew from the book deal after failing to fulfill her contract. She was forced to pay back the publisher for her advance. After that, she caused a scandal by selling tickets to an international “Creative Workshop Tour” to her followers, but none of the events ever took place.
Calloway has been the subject of several other scandals since then, many documented in the 2022 BBC documentary My Insta Scammer Friend. Notably, the author moved to Florida in 2022, reportedly fleeing from a massive amount of debt owed in unpaid rent. She already had a strong connection to Sarasota where her maternal great-grandfather, real estate mogul Owen Burns, developed many of the historic structures in the city. Commenters are still urging her to seek shelter outside of her own home with the storm approaching.
