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Best storm coverage? Radio & TV

I run a risk by even mentioning this, but there's a couple of stations in a Birmingham metro county that should be ashamed that they were soundly unprepared for this sort of situation, resulting in three of the area's four local signals being off during the aftermath phase of the tornadoes. The one that remained on with only minutes of down time during the storms? A lowly LPFM, with local information the whole time.

It's a given that the big market stations will be well prepared for the worst, from backup generators and transmitters to entire auxiliary sites, but small towns that rely on one or two commercial stations should not be exempt from at least a decent amount of preparedness.

I understand small town radio is done on a budget, but it also has an even greater responsibility to inform citizens when there's the good possibility that information from the nearest big city might not apply to said small towns.

BTW I'm also hearing WBIB is off in Centreville. (This rant is not directed at them or Bibb County, but it does apply there too since they're the only local station in the county.)
 
Zach, I agree and the only thing I would add is that there just really wasn't a way for anyone to adequately prepare for a storm system of this magnitude. I hate to think about this but I'm sure many people lost their lives doing exactly what meteorologists tell people to do during a tornado ("lowest floor, near the center, away from windows"). I'm not saying that stations are off the hook, but I'm willing to cut people in the path some slack due to the sheer quantity and strength of the storms.
 
I've worked at a number of small-town stations through the years which didn't have a generator on-site. In some cases, the owner's house and the station time-shared a generator. In most cases, there was no generator at all.

To me, a generator is the most important component of a disaster plan. You can have all the staff ready to report, but if the Harris workhorse doesn't have power, all that staff is SOL.
 
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