Lane Pittman, a man from Florida, has gone viral after he filmed himself staying in the middle of raging hurricane Florence in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, in defiance of evacuation orders and safety warnings. Oh, and he did it while shirtless and with a big US flag in his hand as Slayer played in the background.
"Just being free and American. I don't let nothing oppress me, especially no dang, freaking hurricane," he told a Fox News reporter who caught up with him after the stunt.
When the reporter asked if Pittman was doing this to go viral, he responded: "I've already been viral."
Turns out, this is actually the third time Pittman has pulled this stunt. The first time he did it was in 2016, when he posted a short video clip of himself staring down Hurricane Matthew. The 9-second clip went viral on the web, gaining some 3.6 million views.
The next year, Pittman followed on with a much longer and better-filmed 53-second video of himself staring down Hurricane Irma. That time, he called on viewers to "take a second and donate $1 to American Red Cross to help everyone in need of relief for these hurricanes." However, at the time of this writing, the second clip only had 78,000 views.
Back in 2015, Pittman also made headlines after the police filed him a citation for misdemeanor breaching of peace for playing the US national anthem on electric guitar for a July 4 celebration; his performance drew a crowd of nearly 200 people, according to the Daily Mail. While Pittman said at the time that the police thought about charging him with inciting a riot, the police themselves said the crowd Pittman had gathered was obstructing traffic. Out of respect for the anthem, though, the officers only approached Pittman after he finished playing.
Hurricane Florence made landfall as a Category 1 storm at around 7 a.m. Friday morning, near Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina. A few hours after landfall, weather reporters said the hurricane was slowly moving south along the coast with sustained winds of 80 mph. The hurricane was downgraded to a tropical storm later on Friday.
