Hurricane Irene: Aftermath

If only for future reference when I look back at my posts, I feel the need to give my reaction to this weekends event. Much conversation has continued since the category one storm hit Saturday into Sunday morning. Having scene the videos, scrolled through the pictures and read the comments, I give my perspective.

Heard the term bust being used. Taking into consideration the damage that did occur, I find that to be fairly misleading. Opinion of the storm will be subjective to what happened in your immediate area compared to what was predicted. Some places got what they were expecting, others did not and some were caught by surprise.

If you look at our general area, in this case the areas covered by the Philadelphia news outlets, I believe more people than not were expecting far worse. The hype leading up to this storm was a bit excessive. Telling residents of coastal New Jersey if they chose to stay to place an index card in their shoe with their name on it so they could identify them, while effective, is a bit much. Should this scenario happen again, these same people will not heed warnings and instead laugh you off.

Which brings me to my first point. Evacuations should be voluntary. Obviously our area is not used to dealing with this type of event and it showed. Closing major roads more than 24 hours before the storm arrived is borderline ridiculous. A lot of preparation must be done in order to leave your house for what could end up being an inordinate amount of time. Let people make their own decision based off the information given to them. But let them know that once conditions become dangerous, they are on their own. At the least this would help weed out the stupid from the intelligent.

Point number two. Hold the media accountable. I should preface this by commending the local stations for their tireless work during the storm in keeping people informed. However, please stop playing in the water.

This was not during Irene, but still one of my favorites.

We all know you are looking for the most devastated area to report from. Why wade into chest deep water to show the significance of the flooding is beyond me. Not only is it useless and dangerous, it sets a poor example. Expanding the coverage of the storm in terms of both damage and reporting, the media had their wall of reporters on the coast from North Carolina to New York to catch the money shot of journalism. Meanwhile, northern sections of New York and much of Vermont experienced horrendous flooding. Nobody was there to cover that. Instead I witnessed how desolate Times Square can be on a windy, rainy night. By the time I checked online news sources last night, the Vermont flooding had become the headline. All the pictures and videos were taken by locals and put on YouTube or Twitter. The national media was not in Vermont not because it didn’t have the big city flare like New York City, but because they didn’t know that type of flooding was going to happen. After all, that would have been a ratings delight.

This leads into my third topic. Trying to predict meteorological events has become nothing more than taking the very best educated guess. We don’t know when or where hurricanes will form or where they will hit or how strong they will be or what damage will be done. It’s a guessing game like virtually everything else. Lay off the apocalyptic phrases. It’s like crying wolf. At some point people won’t take it seriously and to be honest, I’m not sure how many people do now. Curiosity mixed with idiocy produces bad decisions.

Not sure how he held his composure with these dopes all around

As the title of the video indicates, these two scholars were later arrested for lack of common sense

I can't give an answer to the questions about hype. It is completely relative to where you live. My biggest issue is the amount of time spent focusing on areas that in the end came out pretty well. Many places inland experienced problems far worse. Should those people have been evacuated instead? It goes back to people making smart and safe decisions. And smart decisions should start with receiving the best possible information. In this case and in most others, I think the information was received. But it was presented horribly. I could write a few more posts about what people were being told that was inaccurate. And that inaccuracy is what will lead people to believe that they will be fine the next time a storm comes up the coast.


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Oh Yeah. One more thing. The weather boards have already moved ahead to look at Hurricane Katia and where that will hit. No, it's not a hurricane yet. But it will be. Then the dance can start all over again.