Hurricane Ike: Hyper-Hysteria Gone Nuclear

Bottom line:  Media coverage of hurricanes has become WORTHLESS, and counterproductive.  My description in the heading is an accurate description of the coverage:  Hyper-hysteria gone nuclear.

 

If you listened to any of the coverage on IKE, and I could not for more than  minute at a time, you could be pardoned for getting the impression that Hurricane Ike was the worst hurricane ever to hit Texas.  There was supposed to be this wall of water 20 feet high wiping out most of the Exas coast, and all of Houston.  Everyone who refused to evacuate, except Geraldo Rivera, was supposed to be facing CERTAIN DEATH.  Every media person seemed to be trying to outdo the previous one in doom and gloom hysteria.  I can still remember Hurricane Camille, before this absolute hysteria and when we sort of took hurricanes in stride.  I can't even imagine the over the top hysteria of another Camille, which came ashore in 1969 on the Gulf Coast mainly in the Mississippi /Alabama area of the Gulf Coast as a Category 5 hurricane bearing winds of 175 mph.  Most people survived.   Before I was born (1947), my mother (at the insistence of my father) rode out a hurricane at Port Lavaca, Texas.  The point is that hurricanes used to represent natural disasters we could deal with, instead of Armageddon.

 

It comes down to an issue of the very soul of the "news" media.  Are they there to provide CALM, accurate information cutting through the hysteria. Or are they there to whip up the hysteria by HYPE and SCARE--crying doom and gloom as if every disaster is the worst thing to ever hit mankind.  We know what direction they have chosen, and it is the wrong one.

 

TV is only useful in a disaster if you can count on it for useful information cutting through the "fog of war"--cutting through the hysteria of the moment.  Tv should actually be aiding a CALM response to something like a hurricane, but a response that adequately respects the real dangers.  I'm sorry.  It does NOT help to keep saying that Hurricane Ike might be the worst hurricane to hit Texas, or this area of Texas--even worse than the 1900 Galveston hurricane that killed more than 8,000 people.  Ike made landfall as a Categry 2 hurricane (although no different than a minimal category 3. 

 

I know it was a BIG hurricane, which made it dangerous.  But enough is enough.  The world was not going to end because of Ike.  Everyone who failed to evacuate was NOT going to die (although I, personally, would have left Galveston).  If you are on an island, or low lying area that might be overwhelmed by the storm surge, you should evacuate (or take really serious precautions).  That does NOT mean that ALL of Houston should be evacuated (as it wasn't).  That does NOT mean going hundreds of miles.  We have simply GOT to develop plans for hurricanes that do not involve sending millions of people hundreds of miles.  As I said in a previous entry, I prefer the Florida approach on Gusvav, which was to advise coastal residents to go 5 or 10 miles to ground high enough to avoid the storm surge.    All of this has to do with authorities acting rationally.  But the media is making it harder and harder for anyone to act rationally.

 

TV coverage of hurricanes has become nothing but a (bad) horror movie.  The only reason to watch is for cheap thrills and to feel the adrenalin rush of vicarious fear--as long as you can turn off your brain.   What else can you say when you have supposedly serious TV "jouranlists" saying something life:  "Ike has been pushing water before it over the entire Gulf of Mexico--really from off the coast of Africa--and all of that water is being pushed onto the Texas Gulf Coast."  I managed to hear that in one of my five or so one minute surfing explorations of the coverage.  God only knows what was said in the massive amount of time I was not watching.  The stories about Paul Bunyan don't contain any whopper this big.  Forget that Ike did NOT "push water before it"  all of the way from the coast of Africa.  It went over CUBA--land. This image of Ike piling up water in front of it all the way across the Gulf of Mexico is vivid, and FALSE.  Yes, hurricane winds drive water before them.  But they don't ACCUMULATE it (on a continuously building scale) lie a snow plow.  In fact, tropical cyclones circulate around an eye, like a large wheel.  How could they possibly be "building" water before them in a single direction?  They aren't.  You just can't get any more STUPID than this.

 

Since the merest dunce realizes they are watching horror fiction with TV coverage of actual, and impending, hurricanes, "crying wolf" does not even begin to cover it.  These people would OVERHYPE a Category 5 hurricane, no matter how bad it is. Everybody can see it.  That means NOBODY will believe it.  In fact, TV is glamorizing "riding out" a hurricane.  You have all of the se reporters apparently standing out in the middle of a hurricane, as if it is FUN--including women.  Who is going to believe this is really dangerous?  It looks like an amusement park thrill ride. 

 

People have tried to answer me before by suggesting that scare tactics are necessary to scare people into evacuating.  Give me a break.  Calm, FACTUAL information MIGHT convince people to take action.  Overhyped hysteria is going to have, and is having, exactly the opposite effect.  People don't believe it.  They SHOULDN'T believe it  Unfortunately, that means they don't believe what they SHOULD believe:  that hurricanes are dangerous things.

 

As I have said before you should IGNORE TV coverage of hurricanes (beyond the simple fact one may be on the way).  There is NO reason to watch these people.  They HYPE every scare thing, and cannot be relied upon for calm information (either before or after).  You should rely on the National Hurricane Center information (despite the tendency for hype there, as well, but not on a scale of TV).  You should rely on local TV and emergency information for the local information you may need.  NEVER pay ANY attention to national EV.  You should figure out for yourself a safe location to ride out a hurricane, if you live on or near the coast.  Listen to local and state authorities, but not to the extent of doing something STUPID like evacuating perfectly safe places in Houston because authorities have been panicked into "ordering" an evacuaton of the entire city.  Now if you have a great place to go (say a mountain vacation cabin), without inconvenience, to avoid a hurricane, why not do that?  Unless you crave the excitement, or want to protect your property, there is no real reason to go through a hurricane for the fun of it, like my father did in Port Lavaca.

 

Is it too bad I have to say things like this, and give this advice?  Yes, it is.  IF the TV networks--especially cable--had gone in the direction of providing CALM, RELIABLE INFORMATION, with perspective and without hysteria and hype, that would be a valuable thing.  As it is, there is NOTHING of value in what they are doing.

 

P.S.  I know that people probably died because of Ike, and I am sorry for that.  However, it is a delusion that this overhyped coverage "saves lives" in the end.  I remain convinced of the exact opposite.  TV people should really worry that oil markets, and speculators, are MORE rational than the TV people, and MORE willing to put things in perspective.  Oil went down AGAIN, as it did with Gustav, even as Ike roared across teh Gulf of Mexico.  The oil markets are aware, as the TV people do not seem to be, that hurricanes happened in the Gulf of Mexico before, and they will happen again, without disrupting the oil market.  Katrina was a special case, unlikely to recur--especially with a perfectly ordinary hurricane like Ike.