I am covering what was probably an EF-0 tornado in Luzerne County, PA today for my news. It's so shocking to see the southern death toll so high. When I got home from work yesterday, I was watching TWC and ABC 33/40 coverage simultaneously. It was the best wall-to-wall severe coverage I have ever seen. But I got a sick feeling when the debris started raining down in Birmingham. It was a sick to my stomach feeling, and those fears are realized. We had quite a bit of damage in our coverage area in NEPA and Central PA...but it really makes you take one step back when you're covering a couple hundred trees snapped off and then look at the areal shots from Tuscaloosa and see how many innocent people--who woke up that morning ready to live their life, had theirs taken away from them so suddenly, so horrifically, and so tragically....
Anyone negatively commenting on the media's coverage during the storms yesterday needs to just take a step back and understand hundreds/thousands of lives may have been saved from advanced warning the on-air mets were providing--from TWC to ABC 33/40 to all the affiliates in the south that were running wall-to-wall coverage. Negatively charged comments toward the media should be aimed and centered to the stations that aired regular programming during the time of the southern outbreak...