Irresponsible.
Here's a little bit of hurricane news to chew on sent to me by fellow Floridian blogger Robyn that I missed catching.
John Winter said on
Channel 8 this morning that he and the National Weather Service had a phone
conference at 8 a.m. yesterday morning, starting to notice that Charley
might go ashore where it did instead, but they didn't report it because it
would have been (QUOTE) "irresponsible" by possibly making Tampa Bay
residents think they were in the clear if it didn't go ahead and make that
final turn. I can imagine the Punta Gorda, etc., residents are so happy NOT
to have had the extra 6-8 hours warning that they might be in MASSIVE
danger. Irresponsible my ass -- I think it's irresponsible they got about 2
hours warning in the end because the news station wanted the "4 million
people" story! Tampa Bay residents had already been ordered to be out by 6
a.m. -- two hours before that phone conference.
Nice huh?
Comments
Thats been my bitch the whole time cuz i had heard that too and posted it on my page...
here is the donaion page from TBO.com
Posted by: heather | August 14, 2004 2:22 PM
That sucks. What is WRONG with these TV people?!
Posted by: Terry | August 14, 2004 3:23 PM
I have no idea Terry. They could have told people it was turning and possibly saved lives. That is just so fucked up.
Posted by: kat | August 14, 2004 3:57 PM
Thanks Heather. I will be making another update on ways to help out soon.
Posted by: kat | August 14, 2004 3:59 PM
Wow, they thought it would be irresponsible to just put the word out and let the residents make their own decisions about whether or not they should evacuate?
I'm with you; I think it was irresponsible of them NOT to.
Posted by: kim | August 14, 2004 10:09 PM
It was totally wrong of them to not put the word out about it all. They should have warned more people in more time.
Posted by: kat | August 14, 2004 11:01 PM
What's irresponsibile is presuming that citizens can't make good decisions based on factual input. That sounds exactly like the way we get into bigger messes than we have to.
Posted by: joseph | August 15, 2004 1:28 PM
Exactly. We are not stupid people. We can deal with a hurricane if given adequate information. I hate the media.
Posted by: kat | August 15, 2004 5:20 PM
I don't know what local media was reporting. Not telling people to evacuate when the National Hurricane Center suggested that they do, is bad and possibly criminally negligent. The national media was reporting that pretty much the whole west coast of Florida should evacuate as well as any lower level communities inland. Forcasters are smart enough to know that they can't predict what a hurricane will do next, so the error on the side of caution and report a large area to be evacuated. This does result in some people thinking that they will be lucky and miss the brunt on the storm, but it resulted in many many people evacuating from potentially hard hit areas and reduced the loss of life greatly.
Posted by: John Frost | August 18, 2004 1:52 AM
But they never said it turned east until like an hour before it made landfall. That is what I have a problem with. They knew early friday morning and didn't say anything.
Thanks for coming by. I'll add the disny blog to the FLA bloggers list. :)
Posted by: kat | August 18, 2004 7:31 AM