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A controversial US social media celebrity and author is under scrutiny after refusing to evacuate her Florida home as Hurricane Milton hits.
Caroline Calloway, 32, who gained a huge following in the early days of Instagram before being accused of scamming her fans with workshops that never took place, shared she was not abandoning her Sarasota apartment despite living in a mandatory evacuation zone.
The 32-year-old self-proclaimed "it girl" and early influencer has instead been using the opportunity to platform her book.
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"If I actually do die in this storm my books will go way up in price," she wrote on her Instagram Story.
In a following post, Calloway said she was "reporting live from the eye of the hurricane".
"We have lost power, but everything has just stopped," she told her 675,000 followers in a video that appears to buffer.
"There's barely any wind, it was so loud one second ago and now it's just absolutely still."
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The author – who infamously spent a book advance then reneged on the deal – appeared to ignore officials who warned of the high likelihood of deaths among those who did not evacuate.
Doubling in size since yesterday, Hurricane Milton today made landfall and tore a swathe through much of Florida, bringing tornadoes and flash flooding.
The storm has left more than 2.02 million without power and forced Florida's homeless population to shelter beneath anything they can find on deserted streets.
Calloway appeared unfazed by the scrutiny and joked about what a news report of her death would look like.
"She died doing what she loved: Posting about her books on Instagram, which nobody believes exist, but are actually very good," she wrote on Instagram.
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