You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.™
Hurricane Irene.
The morning shows are alive with breaking news of the punishing winds and torrential rains.
This monster storm is prompting unprecedented evacuations in New York City and blowing up Eastern North Carolina.
The anchors talk in dark and ominous tones. They use words like:
“impact zone”
“flood crisis”
“eye wall”
The words are scary and the music that is underneath the pictures is unsettling.
Someone says Hurricane Irene is the size of Europe. I stop to think if that is even possible. The size of Germany? sure. Denmark? Why not? But the entire continent? To prove me wrong, the news people super impose a shot of the storm over a map of Europe.
Damn that girl is big.
The Weather Channel shows me shots of the Pier at Atlantic Beach. It is all ready torn apart, surf crashing over it. I’ve walked this pier. It brings back memories. They served a good burger there.
FOX NEWS goes to live reports in Washington DC and Philly. Both cities are in the cross hairs, and preparing for what is being called a storm of historical proportions.
Historical, not biblical. I don’t think it’s a “what would Noah do?” kind of story, but it’s pretty intense.
And of course since the center of the universe is NYC, everything is magnified. If it happens somewhere else its a story, but if it happens in Manhattan, then its all consuming, it is life affecting and news rooms will go wall to wall with coverage even if its a sunny day in Manhattan, Kansas.
That’s because millions of people live here and all of the major news outlets are located here.
But this seems to be the real deal. Millions of Americans, including my sister and her family have been told to haul ass to higher ground. This is a city where buildings were brought down by airplanes and they are evacuating because of wind and rain.
Visuals are surreal. Supermarkets flooded with shoppers and cars jam packed on highways. There is palpable tension. I always wonder if there was no news coverage would life just go on as always. There would be less stress, but more lives lost to be sure.
And of course every station has team coverage from the coast.
It brings me back to my days in Eastern Carolina in the early 90’s. I was a young reporter living in Greenville, N.C.
Back in the day, hurricanes sought out the Outer Banks like a man with a pocket full of dollars seeks out a pole dancer.
I can remember covering a half a dozen hurricanes. I was a one man band and was frequently dispatched to the coast by myself. Not exactly safe, but when you’re 28 years old, who needs safe.
I remember driving along desolate stretches of hwy 12 in Dare County. What a beautiful zip code; Kill Devil Hills and Cape Hatteras and Ocracoke Island.
I remember driving against the grain as thousands of people made a mass exodus over the inland water ways heading for safer ground.
I drove an unmarked station wagon that was white and ordinary. If I were washed into the sea, it’s unlikely that anybody would know.
Now and then, emergency responders would stop and cast a dagger’s stare at me.
“What you doing out here boy? Don’t you know a hurricane is a coming?” they would say with accents so thick you wanted to pour it over pancakes like sweet southern syrup.
“I’m with the news,” I would shout back.
They would wave and drive away shaking their head, wondering why anyone would want drive to the heart of the storm.
This was back in a day when cell phones were the size of shoe boxes, reception was spotty and live truck ability was limited.
You never knew if you could get a live shot, so you just had to record the event, do your job and deal with the broadcast implications later.
There’s an art to covering this type of tragedy. You have to remain calm, you have to know where to go, what’s going to happen next and just as importantly, when you have shot enough footage.
Shooting hours and hours of tape is nice when you have the time to sift through the footage for editing later. But this is a hurricane and you have to attack the job like a sniper, picking your shot, taking your shot, getting out when you can.
There’s a time to collect the news, and there’s time to broadcast the news.
I learned early on that a hurricane is like a lumbering drunk. It’s powerful and reckless but consistently predictable.
It is a constant force of energy. It comes at you relentlessly, typically from the sea.
I can remember parking on a desolate stretch of hwy 12 and letting the blast force winds of the hurricane pound me.
The car would shake trying to come off the ground. The noise was jet engine loud, sounding like a sound check at a Led Zeppelin concert.
I remember the wind and ocean and fury of the storm pounding the passenger window of my car. This would be the window facing the ocean.
The glass was a blur of white foam and chaos. It looked like a soapy car wash. Seeing the ocean was almost impossible out the ocean side window.
The wind was so ferocious at 75 to 100 mph that it painted its own Salvador Dali painting before my lens. It was a swirling explosion of whites and dark blues and hues of destruction.
The interesting thing I learned early on was how the storm exploded over the car like an aerodynamic wind tunnel. Anger and fury and rain blasting the window facing the sea, but most of this craziness would rush over the top of the vehicle like a run-a-way freight train.
Crazily, you could open the window not facing the storm and not feel a drop of moisture.
The sound was that of a hundred Sherman tanks driving over your ear drums. There was a violent vacuum of angry air rushing over the top of the car. I could shoot out this open window – free of rain or convoluted destruction – and show the coastal homes that were getting beaten like prisoners in a Cambodian jail.
And when the storm was finally gone, it left behind a desolate moon scape of flooded streets filled with displaced sand and objects that were discarded from God knows where.
As I watch the umpteenth hour of this coverage, I think how much newsrooms love a good catastrophe. TV journalism is geared for breaking news. It’s what we do best. No deep thinking, no research, no pulling files or deep throat sources, it’s about speed and getting the shot and getting on live before the other guy.
A hurricane is the rare calamity that is predictable. It is forecast days in advance. It calls and makes a dinner reservation at the news director’s house.
“So I’ll be tearing apart your coastline this Thursday around 4pm. Please RSVP.”
And all news directors, like the mono-thought zombies they are, will throw everything they have at this monstrosity.
While tracking is accurate now, in the early 90’s it was like throwing darts at the wall.
Cordan you go to Cape Hatteras. Paul you go to Atlantic Beach. Phil you go to Emerald Isle.
It was a weather casting crap shoot.
It was scary and you knew you could die, but sadly, I must admit it was fun. Chasing a hurricane is exhilarating. When the water is pounding the car and the wind is trying to flip you over and the beach is a red cross post card from hell, that’s fun. When the surf is churning and there is nobody who could administer CPR even if you wanted it, and parts of gas stations are flying through the air, that’s exciting.
It’s a news man rush that only adrenaline junkies like fire fighters and cops and kindergarten teachers know.
I was there.
August 31, 1993 – Hurricane Emily crosses the northeastern Outer Banks, with its strong winds leaving 553 dwellings uninhabitable. Damage amounts to about $35 million and the hurricane causes two deaths.
I was there.
I was there.
It’s a strange event to watch now in this world of 24/7.
I see reporters cling to stairwells and interview surfers and try and talk in 100 mph winds that make you sound like you are shouting through a clothes dryer.
Now older and more grizzled, I am happy to watch the hurricane on TV. I feel for those affected and I know how tired the reporters are who are covering it.
Soon the storm will pass and the clean up will begin. Unlike the hurricane itself, the news stories will go on for weeks, like a relentless low pressure of news where nothing else will crack the newscast but the storm that was.
It’s just the way it is.
And it is crazy.