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JLeslie's avatar

What do you think about the media going on about how great the governors and mayors in the NE handled the hurricane?

Asked by JLeslie (65719points) August 28th, 2011

I think it is good for them to get acknowledgment, and to be an example other government officials can learn from, but before every hurricane local channels have pretty much 24 hour coverage of the storms a day or two ahead, and tons of information and coverage on shelters, evacuations, precautions to take, etc. Even Louisana, New Orleans, before Katrina had evacuations and shelters and warnings, and advice. They definitely made some errors, but the majority of the errors had to do with not asking for federal help before or after the storm, it was not related to getting information out to the citizens, they had days of media and weather coverage before the storm. I watched that storm, I went through Katrina when it came over FL, and then watched that thing getting stronger and stronger as it crossed the gulf. It was obvious it would be really bad, not even thinking about a levee breaking. Most of the country is probably unaware of everything that was done during that storm. Not defending how it was all handled in the end, just trying to put some balance on what happened.

In FL we not only have all that coverage we have information during the governors announcements done simultaneously with a sign language interpreter, and then also given in Creole and Spanish. I would guess the northeast also got information out in many language on their local channels. For me, from a Floridian perspective, the NE did what is always done during a hurricane.

Just to be clear, I have absolutely no problem with stations interviewing and showing clips of the governors giving their messages to the citizenry, I think they should play them over and over again to get the information out. I am only commenting on shows like Meet The Press talking about how this compares to other storms. One commentator on the show pointed out a hurricane is not like a tsunami or an earthquake, there is all sorts of time to prepare and evaluate the situation. Just seems sort of political to me.

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8 Answers

woodcutter's avatar

It could be that Kathleen Blanco and Ray Nagin got a lot of criticism for their actions and nobody wants to get any of that this go round.

marinelife's avatar

They did seem to coordinate well with each other and to think things through ahead of time.

SavoirFaire's avatar

It’s the media reporting good news for a change. Take what you can get.

plethora's avatar

I think it’s all political.

Bellatrix's avatar

I’m not there and hearing this but if the US is anything like Australia, it makes a nice change from “they are idiots”, “they got it all wrong” etc. etc. In our recent floods the Queensland Premier received many compliments on how she handled the disaster. If others can learn from the positives (and negatives) in the way our politicians etc. handle these situations, it can only be good.

JLeslie's avatar

Really good point that it is nice to hear positive news. I guess I just felt like other disasters handled well have been overlooked, that others did not get credit when credit was due in the same way as this event. Maybe this will start a trend on how to cover such things.

King_Pariah's avatar

I think they’re all being over dramatic. It wasn’t even that powerful of a hurricane. Call me when its a Cat 3 or higher, then we’ll talk… And don’t even get me started on that pussy-quake.

JLeslie's avatar

Yeah, if it had been a cat 3 the damage would have been much worse no matter what precautions they took, and then they would have been negatively scrutinized more. The severity of the storm definitely worked in their favor. People comparing to Katrina and it doesn’t compare, not even close.

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