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1 month ago
7 Anderson Cooper is going through it right now.
The CNN anchor was live on air on Wednesday night down in Bradenton, Florida. He was there, of course, to cover the landfall of Hurricane Milton and the subsequent terrifying destruction brought about by the storm. And like news anchors tend to do, he went right where the action was for his live hits — outside in the elements on a pier in the city of Bradenton!! In the middle of the wind and rain and terrifying conditions, and late at night long after the sun had gone down, no less!!
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During his live hit on the national news network, the 57-year-old anchor was talking about the storm surge coming up from the Manatee River when he was hit right in the chest and stomach by a HUGE piece of debris! He was on air talking about the water when suddenly he stopped with a THUD! Cooper was saying:
“The water now is really starting to pour over. If you’re at the ground — WHOA!!!”
A piece of white debris slammed into his torso, and knocked his breath away momentarily!! OMG!!
Thankfully, he was safe and uninjured in the incident. And then, he kept right on going with the newscast like a true journalist:
“Okay, that wasn’t good. Um, we’ll probably go inside shortly, but you can see the amount of water here on the ground. This is water from the Manatee River.”
Later on, back in the studio, anchor Kaitlin Collins came on screen and confirmed that Anderson and his cameraperson were both in fact okay despite the storm surge toppling right over them and flinging dangerous debris around with it:
“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. 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.”
Jeez…
You can watch the moment in question as it happened (below):
And here is Anderson’s entire report on the storm from the walkway by Bradenton’s Manatee River, for those who want to see the full thing, including his ad-libbed live-hit aftermath following the debris collision:
BTW, there is some (relative) good news coming out of Florida right now. Per the Associated Press, Hurricane Milton made landfall as a Category 3 storm on Wednesday — which is down from the Category 4 they were thinking it would be just a few days ago. Even better, the storm then weakened all the way down to a Category 1 as it continued to make its way across Florida.
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Now, a Category 1 storm still sees winds of 90 mph. So, this isn’t, like, a fun thing to go through. And early reports from the Sunshine State via CNN and others are already tallying up a handful of hurricane-related deaths. Clearly, this is not an easy time for Floridians. And there is still much to be done in terms of rescue, and triage, and restoring things like power and clean water for millions of people. But man… it sounds like it could have been so much worse. We’ll count our blessings on that front.
And we’ll wholeheartedly agree with this X (Twitter) user (below), too:
CNN had better let Anderson Cooper black out on New Year’s Eve for this. pic.twitter.com/MvAxR8Ekiv
— Alexis (@TheNotoriousLEX) October 10, 2024
LOLz!!
But, like, for real tho…
