Sunny Side of the Storms
With so many stories of sadness and destruction associated with Hurricanes Helene and Milton, we thought we’d share a couple of miraculous moments.
Found at Sea
We’d call this a miraculous tale of survival. A fishing boat captain survived the fury of Hurricane Milton overnight Wednesday by clinging to a cooler after his boat became disabled.
The captain of The Capt. Dan had gone out to his boat before dawn Wednesday to do repairs. The boat had first become disabled Monday 20 miles off John’s Pass, a tourist attraction in Madeira Beach, Florida. The waves at the time were only six to eight feet tall, with winds around 30 mph. But conditions worsened as Milton approached, and by Wednesday evening, all contact with the captain had been lost.
The Coast Guard’s Air Station Miami began a search for the missing captain at 5:30 a.m. Thursday, finally discovering him around 30 miles out at sea around 1:30 p.m., thanks to his emergency location beacon. The captain was in the water, clinging to what appears to be a styrofoam cooler. Seems he had been there all night — through the hurricane.
#Breaking An @USCG Air Station Miami 65 helicopter crew rescued a man clinging to a cooler approximately 30 mi. off Longboat Key.
The man was taken to Tampa General Hospital for medical care.
Sector St. Pete lost communications w/ the man at approx. 6:45 p.m., Wed. #SAR pic.twitter.com/64wSHuRAeH
— USCGSoutheast (@USCGSoutheast) October 10, 2024
He was taken to Tampa General Hospital for medical care.
The Coast Guard detailed just what horrors that captain endured.
“This man survived in a nightmare scenario for even the most experienced mariner,” said Lt. Cmdr. Dana Grady, Sector St. Petersburg’s command center chief. “To understand the severity of the hurricane conditions, we estimate he experienced approximately 75- to 90-mile-per-hour winds, 20- to 25-foot seas, for an extended period of time to include overnight. He survived because of a life jacket, his emergency position-indicating locator beacon, and a cooler.”
Listening to those conditions, and how long he was out there, it seems a Divine Hand may have had a hand in the sparing of this mariner.
With this next story, there is absolutely no doubt who did the saving.
Saved by the Voice of the Lord
Cindy Cole of Nashville, Georgia, was asleep the night of September 26 as Hurricane Helene passed through her area. She was awakened by the sound of her electricity going out — and a Voice. “Get up! Get to another room in the house!” it said. Three times she heard it. “Get up! Go to another room in the house!”
“I’m thinking it was the Lord telling me to move to another room,” she told SWNS.
Cole obeyed. Within five minutes, a neighbor’s tree came crashing down on her bedroom — and onto her bed.
Her room was completely destroyed. Well, not completely — her Bible remained unscathed.
“You cannot touch the word of the Lord,” she says. “You cannot touch it.”
Al Perrotta is The Stream’s Washington bureau chief, coauthor with John Zmirak of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration, and coauthor of the counterterrorism memoir Hostile Intent: Protecting Yourself Against Terrorism.