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The big question is, how did radio respond?

C

Countryjock

When the storms hit on Monday, how does everyone else think local radio did? I've seen all the "rah, rah" articles but to be honest I was a little unimpressed by OKC radio. KTOK was pretty lame. I know KRMG in Tulsa did a lot and had a reporter there. Unfortunately I couldn't hear what 1170 was doing because their stream was running that stupid "we're currently in syndicated programming" message on a loop (d'oh!). I have heard since then that they WERE on the air live and semi-local and pretty much just potted up KTUL and let it run.

What did everyone else think?
 
I listened to the Tulsa stations on Sunday when it sounded like severe weather was headed toward Tulsa. KFAQ got on the coverage first. It was mostly KTUL audio, but it had some cut-ins from the radio side.

The OKC coverage on Monday could've been better, but it also could've been worse. KTOK and KOKC were mostly simulcasting TV audio from 4 and 9.

On a note that's local to where I live now, we had a tornado warning about 6 weeks ago. One cluster ran local programming while the other simulcasted TV audio. As disappointed as I was to find the station I worked at almost a decade ago was no longer covering severe weather in house, I have to say the TV audio was far superior to the part-time college kid trying to cover weather on the other station. It shouldn't be that way, but it is what it is.
 
Guys... It might be a pride thing to assume that 'in house' would be the best option for at least the play-by-play warning stage. IT ISN'T. The TV guys have this element of the tornado coverage absolutely perfected. The only real things radio stations need to do is get it on the air in a timely manner, make sure it stays on the air, and if possible translate the "as you can see here" moments for those listening through radio. The TV guys pour millions into their coverage, have a chopper, and tons of experience. When tornadoes hit, especially tornadoes like the latest Moore event, you need the A+ team in, not "amature night". What KTOK-KBRU and also the Cumulus cluster did AFTER the storm warning was the best option. When TV was repeating stuff over and over again, taking some phone calls from the radio audience and sending some of their help out to see things for themselves sounded great. To be honest, I think our media did the very best they could with what they had, and in this case they had plenty to work with. We only lost 640's signal due to a generator failure. Other than that, everyone I know about was on the air somehow putting out a real warning in a timely fashion. Media also warned people at least the day before that something COULD happen the next day as there was an elevated risk. Unless they just didn't pay any attention at all, they knew something could happen that day. The questions was more where and how big... not if. Thank you to everyone in Oklahoma media and also to everyone outside of our state for the wonderful outpouring of support. I'm still a bit stunned how much media in other markets are helping out our fellow Oklahomans. Very cool! Thank YOU!
 
In another time radio would have been the lead dog in this but radio gave this up to television years ago and TV chose to cement their position to the point if radio tried it would not even come close. In today's world, it is the agreement to carry the best of the best in local TV during emergencies. Granted the stations that added to television, such as taking calls, etc., is beyond the call of duty and needs to be encouraged.

In another diaster, Hurricane Katrina, the staffs of the various stations worked together to provide such exceptional service to the community, talking with members of the community by phone, etc., that tuning in to listen left you in awe and a defined chill down your spine, the same feeling I got hearing of the Moore tornado.

I streamed TV audio here at home and was very impressed. The one thing I got watching the stream was how compassionate some of the reporters in the field were. It came across that they were heartbroken as well with the scenes they were reporting on. In my opinion media shined pretty brightly from my perspective.
 
Another factor in all of this is that OKC isn't the strongest of News-Talk radio markets, agreeing with your previous statement. Most of us are trained to turn on TV, not radio when you want news. Several factors are at play here. First, commute times in OKC aren't all that long, which hurts talk. As a result, the "dominate" N/T in this market, KTOK trimmed and trimmed down to the point they are a mere shell of themselves in the past. So, even though those that are still there did a very excellent job on this event, people aren't as likely to turn to them for breaking news. With their favorite TV on their normal music station, there is little reason to change that thought either. But, with what we all had to work with, I think things turned out the best it probably could. The only things that would have went better of course is if we could have known that Bill Warren's theater was so dang resilient. It sure would have been a great place to "see a movie" during the tornado as it proved to weather the storm very, very well.... It appears that he and his architect had some storm-proofing in mind when they built it after the May 3rd storm.
 
The entire CC cluster went to full storm coverage (KFOR) around 2:20pm on Monday. The other groups went 15 - 20 minutes later. Using TV partners is a no brainer. They have the tools and resources to cover the tornado better than anything else. KTOK has continued with 14+ hours a day of local coverage all week. No Rush, Beck, or Hannity. I think KTOK's coverage has been really solid from the start.
 
OKCRadioGuy said:
Guys... It might be a pride thing to assume that 'in house' would be the best option for at least the play-by-play warning stage. IT ISN'T. . . . . . . . . .
Click to expand...

I agree 100% with the perspective of this post. I was listening to the KWTV 9 coverage on KOKC 1520. The only thing that frustrated me was: Two times, when it was crucial to be able to hear the live coverage, the EAS system interrupted the audio with a warning. The EAS broadcast in reality may not have been very long, but when you are getting real time, intersection by intersection reports of a violent tornado, it seemed like an eternity.

I have been listening to KTOK 1000 since the tornado and commend the on air guys for their continuous coverage of and assistance with the recovery efforts.
 
Although they seemed a little late to the game last weekend, KRMG has always done an excellent job covering severe weather. The old KVOO was great, too, with trained spotters in the field who would describe weather to a radio audience, which can be obviously missing when listening to TV coverage. "As we see on the radar here..." Uhhh...no we don't! Brian Gann was trying really hard to supplement the TV coverage on KFAQ, and he was doing quite a good job, but it wasn't the severe weather coverage he was doing 20 years ago.

When I worked at KFRU, we were the gold standard in severe weather coverage. We had our own radar, a full-time meteorologist, and a plan on how to handle severe weather coverage when it was needed. I suppose the cynics will say, "Well, Cumulus bought them. What did you expect?", but it's really not that simple. We made money on severe weather coverage. We had two exclusive sponsors for "Premier Storm Link Now" severe weather coverage, and one, if not both, paid a pretty penny for that sponsorship. It was more than enough to cover the meteorologist's salary, and the high-priority spots we missed could be made up the next day while most of the others could be ROS'ed. However, the writing on the wall the severe weather coverage was over came about five years before the end and several months before Cumulus bought the group. Neither of our longtime sponsors renewed. The car dealership said it was having to debut a new line of cars and couldn't keep paying our rates. I don't know what the other sponsor's reasons were, but it didn't renew either. I was actually surprised Cumulus kept the coverage as long as it did.

So, I was disappointed to tune in KFRU six weeks ago during a tornado warning and hear ABC 17's audio. But, like I said, it was better than the illiterate boob across town stumbling over every other word. Maybe it was just a matter of the market no longer supporting severe weather coverage. Maybe the TV stations were learning from us and figuring out how to make a better product. Whatever the case, it's not what it once was for radio.
 
"The only thing that frustrated me was: Two times, when it was crucial to be able to hear the live coverage, the EAS system interrupted the audio with a warning. The EAS broadcast in reality may not have been very long, but when you are getting real time, intersection by intersection reports of a violent tornado, it seemed like an eternity" There IS a technical solution to this, but most of us don't bother to use it. The EAS box could be put into manual mode when people are there and switched to auto mode when they aren't. The trick is that you have to put it back into automatic or you're in violation because stuff won't auto-repeat. There might be some way of putting a hold-off switch on the EAS box to selectively hold off TORN warnings. Maybe that's something we all collectively need to take up with Sage and the other manufactures. I cringe when I hear it interrupt a real report in progress for the robot voice, but I know what the challenges are to prevent that. I suppose another option already available would be to simply delay the tornado warnings by, let's say 30 seconds. Then, tell the operator hopefully on duty to hit the abort button before it goes out if you see a tornado warning coming in. Not exactly the best option... but an option.
 
KRMG lead the way with radio coverage. Hard to beat KOTV considering their OKC connection. Having two helicopters in the air was amazing. Looks like KOKI picked up the chopper feed from KFOR. KTUL and KJRH were just okay.

The Cox stations did a good job with the coverage. KFAQ sounds like a shadow of the former KVOO. Say what you want about Great Empire, but they sounded local and they did a good job with news and weather. Journal has cut that station to the bone! Sad! Clearchannel was asleep as usual.

KOTV/KWTV win the overall weather image. KOKI is the one to watch. I bet Cox will pump a lot of money into their new TV/Radio/Cable monopoly, I mean cluster.
 
I watched KOCO during both Moore and El Reno. Great, great coverage. It did get a little repetitive during El Reno as they were talking too much about the Moore tornado and not El Reno. I flipped to KWTV and they had a helicopter up and everything.

-crainbebo
 
Everyone is asking, "why did people get in their cars and drive when the tornado was coming?"

I was listening to KTOK at the time. They were carrying the audio from KFOR-TV. The guy on the TV was TELLING people to "get out of the way, drive south, you have about 10 minutes..." over and over and over again.

Is anybody talking about this? It seems to me THAT is the answer to "why was everybody getting into their cars and trying to outrun an EF-5 tornado."

It ALSO seems like somebody should be held responsible for this incredibly irresponsible broadcast. Maybe several somebodies. :mad:
 
It was not just KFOR. It was everyone I checked saying to get underground to survive this and if you can't get underground get to a neighbor's underground shelter or drive south away from the tornado. It sounded to me they were saying these were the options if you are in front of this tornado. Granted it was the end of rush hour.

From what I have read (and I may not have all the facts), the vast majority of deaths happened when people drove into the tornado on I-40...people driving west. Storm spotters said it did not look like a tornado but more like a cloud on the ground since it was so wide. People would think it a wall cloud...the whole cloud, touching the ground. It was pretty well rain wrapped too.

I am not sure how irresponsible it was to tell people if they can't get underground, get away in order to save your life. I think people had the Moore tornado in mind and everyone paniced.

We had that happen in Houston: A few weeks after Katrina, Rita threatened the gulf coast and was supposed to make Katrina look wimpy. Everybody tried to leave at once. In mere hours there was no gas, food, diapers, etc. People on the road ran out of gas and pushed their cars. Violence erupted. 600 died mostly from heat related issues from a hurricane that did virtually no damage to the city. A lady I talked to spent 32 hours reaching Austin, normally about 2.25 hours away. Most of these deaths don't get blamed on the hurricane since they happened prior to landfall.

I'm hearing lots of people saying every school needed to have a storm shelter for everyone and new houses need to be required to have a safe room or underground shelter. The costs would be amazingly high. School tax ceilings would need to be removed and School taxes would need to almost double. Home prices would have to increase substantially...maybe up to 20%. The backlog to get a shelter installed might mean years before it is completed.

I think we need to remember tornadoes come in different strengths. The EF5 is quite rare. Two EF5 tornadoes in the same state within days in unheard of...a first in our known weather records. This tornado was so erratic and unusual three of the better, if not best storm spotters that have been in front of hundreds, if not a thousand tornadoes, were outsmarted by this one and persihed. The Weather Channel vehicle was even swept up in it. Chances are we'll never see another one like this in our lives. I understand the moisture rating was 5,500. You need 1,000 to produce a tornado when the set up is right. The tornado was the largest (2.6 miles wide) and had the second highest winds ever recorded (295 mph) ever recorded. This one is the odd man out and will be researched for years if not decades.

I think we need to look at everything. How could the weather service, the public and the media made things a bit safer. I suspect everyone did the right thing at the time. Sometimes what is the right thing now is not such a good idea a few minutes later. Having lived in tornado alley, it is my experience that people don't react to the threat until its on their doorstep. I recall the fellow who was taken up in a tornado and survived. He said he knew there was a tornado warning but he said they happen all the time. He knew he was supposed to leave his mobile home but no tornado had ever hit his, so he stayed. In other words, all the times nothing happened made him think it never would. He took a ride and lived. Simply put, if he can't see it coming at him, he's not doing anything. How many think that way?

Putting things in perspective, I suspect more people die from drunk driving in Oklahoma each year, if not month or two, than died from these two EF5 tornadoes. That's just a guess but I'd wager we can find many things taking more lives in a time span than tornadoes.
 
bturner said:
...I am not sure how irresponsible it was to tell people if they can't get underground, get away in order to save your life...
Click to expand...

Very irresponsible, because most people "can't get away". I watched TWC during the severe event and Dr. Forbes was telling people it was too late to try to escape by car. Besides, lots of people survive F5 tornadoes by sheltering in place.

"Get as low as you can and put as many walls as you can between you and the tornado": http://www.livingontherealworld.org/?p=899
 
You do know F5 tornado damage wipes houses clean leaving only the foundation, right? An interior closet, bathtub, etc. in an F5 means almost certain death. Luckily maybe 1 in a thousand is an F5.

It was at least 10 minutes before the tornado was to strike El Reno that people were told to drive south if there was no underground option and they were in the tornado's path.

Moore could have been much worse if it happened when everyone was home. Lots people who were home drove away from the path.

I don't advocate jumping in the car but I look at it this way: it is much like a person pointing a gun at you in close range. You can stand there, duck, try talking or run for your life. None are good options but you might just get away if you run, although chances are slim. Staying was almost certain death in those folks minds so a run south in the car lowered the odds. I'm reminded of the lady in Nashville. Her neighborhood was flooded. Emergency services couldn't reach her. And her house was on fire. Her options, jump in raging flood waters and wash away or burn to death. Luckily she was saved by a neighbor maybe a minute or two before her house blew up. The choices weren't good.

I have to ponder if media didn't mention this what would the death toll look like? It might be more...maybe less, we'll never know. Certainly we must ask ourselves if we were on the air at this moment knowing somethat that freaked out even the weather experts was moving into that populated area, what would we have said? Would we have said to get to an interior room or bathtub if we felt they would almost certainly die? Would we have told people to drive south? Certainly people should have considered finding a safe place before anything bad happened but we tend to think it will never happen to us, that history will always repeat itself and we'll be okay, again.

From the sources I can find, 9 died in vehicles. Of those, 3 storm chasers, 2 members of a family driving west of I-40 and an oilfield worker on I-40. Two more men died in their vehicle in Union City (maybe they were escaping?). The 9th person I'm unsure of. And I must admit none of these seem to account for the woman and her infant sucked out of their car. There was also a report of a 4 year old with his family that sought shelter in a ditch being torn from the parents' arms as the tornado passed. It seems the family on I-40 where two died might have been the ones opting for the ditch but I cannot connect that. I had even read somewhere, some news story, all the in vehicle deaths were from driving into the tornado on I-40 or from flash flooding. In other words, the story indicated none of those who drove south died trying...maybe they did, maybe not.

The TV and radio, regardless, seemed to be spot on and certainly shined as tornadoes struck this weather weary part of the country again.

This was a truly freak tornado and of the sort chances are we will never see another of this width or intensity again in our lives.
 
This was a truly freak tornado and of the sort chances are we will never see another of this width or intensity again in our lives.
Click to expand...

I've lived here all my life, so far. I would put that quote into the "famous last words" category.
 
Certainly we must ask ourselves if we were on the air at this moment knowing somethat that freaked out even the weather experts was moving into that populated area, what would we have said?
Click to expand...

I have been on the air when tornadoes were moving into a populated area, and I can tell you EXACTLY what I would have said.

Having lived here my entire life, I would repeat the advice I have heard my entire life:

"If you are in a car, abandon the car and get to a ditch. If you are in a mobile home, get to a safe structure. If you are in a home, get as many walls between you and the outside as possible. You are more likely to die being tossed around in a car than you are to be killed in your brick home."

This is true EVEN WITH AN EF-5. An EF-5 can get a LOT closer to a home than it can to a car without damaging the occupants. Those people could NOT have known the EF-5 was going to hit THEIR house... but they could know a near-miss would be more dangerous in a car than in a home.

If people had died in their homes, at least I would have know they weren't being tossed around like rag dolls in Matchbox cars. They weren't getting sucked out of their cars as I heard a couple of dead storm chasers were.

Even my grandparents knew not to try to out-drive a tornado, for all the reasons trying to out-drive this one was a bad idea.

...Additionally, if you listened to the coverage, you know spotters were saying the tornado was straddling I-40, at least for a while. If it is on the road, I would stay OFF of the road to survive.

The solution to possible death is not near-certain death. This was BAD ADVICE, and it has NEVER been the recommendation of broadcasters until just recently.

Tell you what: we'll put a tornado on a path to clip a house, and give you the option of being in the house, or being in a car on the driveway. Which will you choose?
 
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