Friday, February 02, 2007
It's an even (non-blogging) day, so this will be quick.
I hadn't heard about the tornadoes in Florida until the evening news. I HATE it when they say stuff like "central Florida", or "several communities north of Orlando", as they did tonight in referring to where the tornado hit. My sister lives in "central Florida", in a "community north of Orlando". Why on earth can't they show us a map of the tornado's path? I had this same complaint last year with the hurricanes.
I spent an hour trying to find out online exactly where the damage was, but the only site that might have had a map took the browser down. I tried to call Sister, but "all circuits are busy" etc.
You know, if the evening news were more specific about where things happen, you wouldn't have a few million people all worrying needlessly and all calling at once to find out if their people are ok!
I finally found some more specific information - the tornado was 50 miles north-west of Orlando. Ok, now I know my sister is not in the damage area, and I don't have to contribute to jamming up phone lines that could be better used for emergencies.
Why the heck couldn't the evening news have been at LEAST that specific? Where my worrying about Sister is concerned, there's a big difference between "north of Orlando" (Ack!) and "50 miles north-west of Orlando" (Whew.)
-------------- Slightly later update ------------
Redcross.org has a page where if you are in a disaster area, you can put in your name and a short message like "I'm ok". So if you're worried, you can look your people up there.
Sure.
If they're dead, they won't be listed there for a long time, if ever.
If they're camping in the toolshed with no electricity, they can't list themselves.
If the disaster is 50 miles from where they are, it wouldn't occur to them to bother listing themselves.
The list seems pretty useless to me.
.
No comments:
Post a Comment