I really don’t disparage the earnest, bordering on zealous, warnings and preparation swirling around hurricane Irene. The potential destruction resulting from a massive storm traveling up the densely populated East Coast was nothing to take lightly. Thankfully the storm wasn’t as catastrophic as it could have been. Nevertheless, lives have been lost, people remain in dangerous situations, clean-up will be hard work and costly. My thoughts and prayers go out to all who have been affected.
There will always be idiots who get themselves in trouble for having no common sense. Listening to the news you would think it has come to pass that Americans generally do not know when to come in out of the rain. Post-Katrina, no politician wants to be seen slacking when it comes to hurricanes. Flip through the channels and you were bound to see a governor or a mayor warning the public about Irene and delineating a plan.Gov. Christie doesn’t regret evacuating a million people from the Jersey coast. “The best way to ensure there is no loss of life on the New Jersey coast was for there to be no human life on the New Jersey coast,” Christie told CBS News.
The rest of the time, the news is largely slickered up reporters showing us agitated surf, blocked storm sewers and the wind. Who knew a hurricane meant a lot of rain and wind? This was 24/7 for at least three days. Every storm-felled tree limb and babbling brook gone wild had its 15 minutes of fame.
It could have been a lot worse although there is some suspicion the media ignored tracking changes that indicated a less powerful storm. Get Real: Hurricane Irene Should Be Renamed “Hurricane Hype”. Maybe we can’t be warned too often or prepare too much for extreme weather. Maybe hype will save lives, but maybe hype will result in “the boy who cried wolf” response for the wrong storm.
The silver lining is we get to laugh at the over-the-top coverage such as this CNN report. The breathless reporter takes shelter while people stroll and ride bicycles on the boardwalk.
My vote for best raw news reporting goes to this Ocean City report on bad-smelling, bad-tasting, brown “sea foam”.
Reporter Gives Update Covered in Sea Foam
A local news reporter from Washington, D.C. ended up getting covered in what is probably the remnants of raw sewage as he delivered live hurricane reports from Ocean City, Md.
I still have faith that Americans know when to come in out of the rain…and when it’s OK to go out into the rain. The media? Not so much.
Interesting piece Pat S, and yes, I heard about the “sea foam” news guy this morning on the radio! Poor thing, I mean, “get real”! If it smells like doodie, sorta looks like doodie, it’s probably doodie! Ick! How disgusting to think that guy must have walked back into the hotel where he was staying with that mess all over him. He needed to be hosed off outside!
A couple of times over the weekend, I put the TV on Fox News, and there was Mr. Melodrama Shep Smith providing some of the constant coverage of this thing, and it really made me think that these people were scared something awful would happen, and they wouldn’t be there to cover it. It was a serious story, but it became obvious before long that it did not warrant 24/7 coverage. However, as concerns preparations for the storm, etc., I agree, for the locals in the path of the storm, that it’s better safe than sorry.
Great post Pat S – the CNN clip…Priceless!
We all love to laugh at the weather-guessers. They overhype something that turns out to be a tempest in a teapot, or fail to adequately warn us of really bad stuff. Either way they take a hit. I’m sure all local weather-babes and -dudes are the same, but here in St. Louis we get to see the low person on the totem pole standing out on a freeway overpass in an ice storm to bring us video of hapless motorists spinning out on the road below. Wow! Who knew ice was slippery? God help us if there’s a severe thunderstorm, because then our shows are interrupted and we’re treated to video of the “weather center”, showing us maps of the storm track and how much water falls on everybody.
Listening to the macho men (mostly they were men), talk about how bad Irene was going to be and how stupid we all were not to be able to figure out for ourselves what to do reminded me of how Tammy always talks about how the govt is treating us as though we were infants. It was a pathetic display. None more so than Bloomberg in NYC. Time and again I heard folks who actually understand hurricanes explain how the doomsday scenario presented by the mayor simply had no chance of happening, especially not with a storm like Irene. That didn’t stop Mr. Nanny from going so far as to threaten to shut off the power if folks didn’t listen to him and get off the island.
Earthquakes may be rare on the East Coast, but hurricanes, even powerful ones, are not. We can predict where the flooding will happen. We know that the storm surge will be powerful and we have learned to adapt. Folks living in low areas know they will suffer flooding, just as folks in California who choose to build in fire prone areas know they risk seeing their home destroyed by the “perfect fire storm”. They made a judgment that though there was a risk, the advantages were greater.
There are spots on the coast where hurricanes usually hit and folks there know what to do, and have neighbors who do if they don’t. You may not be able to save your home, but you can keep yourself safe. Homes can be rebuilt, lives are not replaceable.
I tend to forget that Long Island is an island until news of a hurricane comes. Being planted solidly in the middle, far from either shore, coastal fooding is not an issue. I know that towns along the coast will be hit hard and the wind, rain and surge from the Atlantic will be trememdous. So do the folks who choose to live there. I also expect to lose power for up to five days, and experience a flooded basement at a minimum. Such is life. It has happened in the past and will again in the future. I check that nothing outside will become a flying projectile, get the portable radio ready and go into hurricane mode. This time we had a wet ground, and I wonder if the recent earthquake, mildy felt here, didn’t shake up the soil around the roots of the many trees in the area. I expected loose branches and even huge trees to come tumbling down. During the storm I kept checking one 40 foot tree swaying dangerously all day long. It didn’t fall, but my neighbor, without being told, had it cut down the day after the storm. A different tree did fall, right on top of the powerlines to my home. It literally ripped the wires from the house and the power pole. My yard was littered with branches, some like spears sticking deep into the ground. Another ten foot branch landed in my driveway, right where the car hood would have been had not hubby been of the type to always garage it (Most folks here use the garage to store everything but their car). Listening to a local station which had the good sense to do calls in all day instead of regular programming, I heard from people throughout Long Island. Certain areas (the predictable ones) suffered flooding. Other areas suffered mostly damage from falling trees. One report had a guy driving around with a tree sticking out of his windshield. Folks complained that the emergency numbers, including the Red Cross, were overloaded. I find that inexcusable. In 2011 being unable to reach someone thru an emergency number is not acceptable. We were being “told” what to do, what were the powers in charge doing? We know there is little that can be done to restore power to areas of great flooding, but hundreds of thousands experienced power loss due to falling trees. We knew that was coming, so why don’t I hear those chain-saws? We don’t expect miracles, but we do appreciate honest assements and some basic information. So far, LIPA has been stingy about sharing information, and that only causes the frustration level to increase. We don’t need the state officals to tour the area, we need them to demand that the crews needed to resolve the problem be found and put to work. Looking at a tree sitting on a powerline and hearing a recorded message saying you can expect power returned after Labor Day is not helpful.
Among the good news of the storm were so many examples of folks being good neighbors. Those with power allowing those without to recharge phones and other items. The people on one block who parked their cars to block a fallen power line which unsuspecting drivers might otherwise have hit. Neighbors going out of their way to check on the elderly, offering help and supplies like ice. Folks with chain-saws making the rounds of the neighborhood, helping to clear the area. So long as we have good neighbors, America can do without a Nanny state.
There’s being prepared, crying wolf, and doing both HYSTERICALLY. I’m sick of people in the media and gov’t making themselves feel important every time some news breaks or the latest ‘geddon du jour is on the horizon.
The media coverage of Hurricane Irene was certainly a circus side show. Then when no skyscrapers fell down, they moved on to other more interesting news. The story on the big networks a week later is about how it will impact the housing market.
But there’s a story of devastation wrought by Tropical Storm Irene in many small towns and cities that went largely ignored by big media and only reported in the local media.
In the big picture Irene put 3.5 million people in the dark. Eight hundred thousand in Virgina, a large number of whom were a hundred miles or more away from the coast. Connecticut may have been among the hardest hit, a state of around 3 million people in which over 500 thousand customers (almost 1.5 million people or 50% of the entire population) lost power. Vermont has towns that are cut off from the rest of the state with flooding that took out highways and bridges. I’m sure there are similar things to say about portions of inland New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts.
People and small businesses are hurting, many are still without power, many without a place to live. These are not people who failed to heed the warnings to evacuate coastal towns. They aren’t on the coast, and some live in the places where evacuees might go inland to seek shelter.
There are inspiring stories of compassion, some mentioned in comments above. We don’t see a lot of headlines about looting and riots. Some local radio stations pitched in to suspend their syndicated programming and became 24/7 clearinghouses that people are calling to let others know of needs or resources available to share, what streets are passable or impassable, where to find necessities and sundries where the lights are on and stores are open for business, or just provide a human voice to encourage other people stuck at home listening on battery powered radios that things are getting slowly back to normal.
This wasn’t the tsunami by any means, but it wasn’t an April shower. People are hurting, people are helping. Not much of it involves the federal government on a practical level. Some of it involves local government and national guard units. These are our people, normal everyday Americans working through a disaster.
I wish I could post links to photo galleries, but to remain within the rules let me suggest the following google searches for anyone interested which will lead to some local media collections of pictures that chronicle the effects of tropical storm Irene. Make sure to put the quotation marks if you search on these:
“Frightening Photos Of Hurricane Irene’s Destruction”
“dramatic photos from Hurricane Irene”
“Reader submitted Irene photos”
Within a few weeks Irene will be a memory for most of the people who lived through it. Like the blizzards of the past few years, there will be stories for a generation of holiday gatherings. For some others life won’t be the same after Irene. For a few life ended. It wasn’t what the big media portrayed on either extreme.