Bring the Thunder #TBT

I've been in Radio going on 6 years now it's had it's ups and downs, much like any other job it is full of those who know what they're doing and just good old fashioned dumbassery.  This story is about the later.

Last night we had a huge thunderstorm it reminded me of an incident that occurred 4 years ago.  We had a tornado touch down here.  I'm in Ohio and tornados aren't very common in these parts.  It's one of those situations that are so surreal you lose focus.

For instance we were told to rush to the Police station in our remote vehicle (a former ambulance) we were given permission to go as fast as possible and run the lights while driving...

I drove.

We then arrived at the police station only to realize that the remote reciever was without power because of the Tornado...  Wampa Wah

This is at least 3 types of wrong.

So this was an all hand on deck type situation.  The station was full of people we did the press conference via Cellphone.  The other DJ and I went out to scout, give traffic reports things of that nature where to go, where not to go,  a remote lay of the land type thing.

At this point for whatever reason we switched to another local station (perhaps we were curious if they'd break they're satellite feed to report).  The woman on the other station was dumb, she was giving just terrible advice to everyone,  we were actually told by local law enforcement to contradict all of her statements and that if we had any means of stopping her to do so (I'm not sure what they thought we could do at a different radio station).

Here's an example.  "Folks these workers need our help clearing the roads if you see downed trees go out there and chop them up, help out"  Now as I mentioned earlier this is one of those surreal times where you don't think at first, but this statement came a full 4 hours after the tornado had struck.  This is a particularly bad idea because next to roads (where these downed trees were covering) tend to be powerline.  So you have someone telling you "hey you have a chainsaw go cut into that downed tree covered in powerlines, nothing will happen"  Again law enforcement wanted her to stop talking so this was pretty dumb.

But the best part of the night (because at this point how could we turn it off)  Was when she said they'd go back to music and break in and out to give updates.  "Oh well that's not a good first song, I'm sorry folks this song is so inappropriate but we have nothing else lined up at the moment".

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