In DC, Fox has switched to all day coverage and the other channels were forecasting damage just shy of the Apocalypse for the entire mid and north-eastern coastline. Did the recent earthquake scare them into "Killer Nature" mode? I need my Fox fix of Simpson reruns and NASCAR.
-- Bobby G.
I usually like their business discussions Saturday before noon but have switched to the Food Channel.
Not just FOX but all the local stations. I'm fully preped but they are scaring my wife. There should be some perspective.
Public officlals are probably influenced by inadequate preparatios for Hurricane Katrina and icompetent relief assistance afterward.
sure beats a solid week of superbowl coverage
Amen Brother! And let me add royal or any other kind of weddings to that.
Jim
I'll add Casey Anthony and all the other killers. And Michael Jackson, and.....
--Vic
Deliver the mail and protect the borders. After it shows competence at those two tasks, I'd be willing to give them a go at something else.
To change it from within.
Charles Krauthammer had an observation yesterday: "Earthquake, hurricane, Obamacare. When does it stop? Seven more and I vote we let the Israelites go."
Or months on end of Casey Anthony!
Harry K
It is a media feeding frenzy trying to build a fairly routine small hurricane into a natinal disaster. Lots of hype, near nothing for excitement or damages yet. I did see a couple trees...well, saplings that I could have pushed over by myself shown on the evening news. They reported a huge death toll so far....all of 4. I'll bet those were idiots.
Harry K
"Harry K" wrote
The kid sitting in his apartment when a tree branch blew in the window and killed him was an idiot?
No his parents were idiots for letting him sit by an unprotected window. I have hurricane shutters on my windows and we still stay away from them in a storm. They are tested to stop a 2x4 coming end on at 90 MPH but there is going to be bigger things than that flying around.
I would not call him an idiot, just somebody who never learned that a window is not a wall. Not many hurricanes here in Great Lakes area (just the massive rains from the dying ones that make it up this far), but we do get plenty of tornadoes. From grade school on, they pound it in to everyone, that 'if you can see daylight, you are in danger'. Even if you are in a typical modern cheaply-built apartment, taking refuge in the bathroom when it starts getting noisy improves your survival chances a lot.
Even if the death/injury count stays low, my sympathies go out to all affected. Storm cleanup is an expensive PITA, and it takes forever when local trades get swamped. I still have trees from the little baby Memorial Day storm laying in back yard, as do many of my neighbors. Local governments threw in the towel on debris pickup around 4th of July, and told residents they were on their own for the rest of it- no more money, and crews needed to start on summer road repairs.
That happened later and appears to be the usual "exception to the rule" The summary of those killed today were mostly people who died due to their own actions.
Harry K
Yep, a whole bunch of reporters out there scrambling to find a "story"...and failing. Other than the power outages, which are a major problem, not much except a few trees down plus flooding.
Harry K
Devoting 24 by 7 coverage to it seemed a little excessive. We lost power for 15 hours or so, but no major limbs down and no flooding. That's north of DC. West of DC was barely touched. We had a record 12" in one day of very heavy rain and a tornado a few years ago. That was *real* bad weather, not a media event.
-- Bobby G.
I've asked a few people and I think the over-coverage was mostly a result of getting caught so flat-footed by a 5.8 earthquake. Sort of like how they over-estimate the amount that will come in a storm because they under-estimated the last storm. And got caught flat-footed again.
Our local power company (Wash. DC) came under fire at the Congressional level (many have part-time homes here) because they had basically stopped preventatively pruning the right-of-way. They had been trying very hard to shift that cost to homeowners and local governments ever since deregulation. Two bad storms with really long recovery times (compared to national averages) forced them to do a lot of limb cutting recently. It seems to have paid off. I was back on the grid before the freezer hit 23F.
-- Bobby G.
Or royal weddings, Michael Jackson funerals, etc . . .
-- Bobby G.
Fox News will turn that into: Conservative columnist suggests ending support for Israel!
-- Bobby G.
It is a media feeding frenzy trying to build a fairly routine small hurricane into a natinal disaster. Lots of hype, near nothing for excitement or damages yet. I did see a couple trees...well, saplings that I could have pushed over by myself shown on the evening news. They reported a huge death toll so far....all of 4. I'll bet those were idiots.
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A lot of people do behave stupidly in the face of seriously bad weather. I've seen survivor of "hurricane parties" interviewed. They were on the upper floors in a multiple story hotel, getting drunk as skunks, when the storm surge collapsed the lower floors, sending them in the dark, storm whipped waters below. Most died and were swept out far to sea but a few survived "to tell the tale" like Moby Dick's Ishmael by clinging all night to floating debris. It's a simple program in pseudocode:
IF you're living in the Southeast US AND your home's below sea level AND CAT
THEN evacuate ELSE die.
-- Bobby G.
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