Anderson Cooper was hit by flying debris during a live broadcast Wednesday while reporting on Hurricane Milton in Florida.
The CNN anchor was reporting from the banks of the Manatee River in Bradenton, Florida, south of Tampa, and was describing the scene when violent winds blew past him and heavy rain drenched him and his crew.
“The water is really starting to overflow,” Cooper said as he trudged through the water, which gushed over the shore he was walking along.
“If you look at the ground, wow…” he said, stopping short when a white object slammed into his torso. “Okay, that wasn't good.”
The “Anderson Cooper 360” host resumed his reporting and noted that he would likely be in shortly. “But you can see the amount of water here on the ground. “This is Manatee River water.”
The footage then went to the CNN studio and “The Source” host Kaitlan Collins reassured viewers about her colleague.
“I want to point out to everyone watching who is very concerned obviously for all of our correspondents and anchors on the ground, that Anderson is fine,” he said. “Obviously it is understandable that it is difficult to make a connection when you see what happens with the wind and the rain. And, obviously, the deterioration of conditions minute by minute.”
Cooper, who joined CNN in 2001, has repeatedly reported from the scenes of crises, and was famous for traveling to the Gulf Coast for much of September 2005 to deliver emotional reports on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina's destruction.
Hurricane Milton made landfall near Siesta Key, a barrier island near Sarasota, around 8:30 p.m. ET on Wednesday. It left a trail of destruction in its wake, with storm surges of up to 10 feet and 120 mph winds hitting communities across the state, flooding homes, toppling trees and knocking out power to 3 million Floridians. Milton is the third hurricane to make landfall in Florida this year; It comes less than two weeks after Hurricane Helene slammed into the rural Big Bend region of the state's panhandle and then moved into Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee, killing more than 230 people in several states.
As Milton left the coast Thursday morning and moved toward the Atlantic Ocean, it weakened to a Category 1 hurricane, but officials warned that a large swath of the state's east coast was still under threat. In St. Petersburg, the hurricane tore off most of the roof of Tropicana Field, the stadium of the Tampa Bay Rays. He also pushed a construction crane off the roof of a partially constructed luxury skyscraper onto an office building that houses the offices of the Tampa Bay Times newspaper.
Times staff writer Jenny Jarvie and intern Sandra McDonald contributed to this report.
