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Another news article about storm "tourists"
- Thread starter Greg Stumpf
- Start date
David Drummond
Member
There were a lot of people out around Mulvane that day. But I seem to remember seeing things a bit differently. Every chaser I saw was pulled off the road and in the ditch with their tripods. K15 was shut down by a fire truck just before the tornado crossed the road presumably to keep the traffic that was still headed that way from dying in it. Got that on video in fact.
We went down the road where the worst damage was to check on people. There were some cars down there, mostly locals who went to help, and one fire truck that was leaving the scene headed to look for others. Got that on video too.
I did hear a couple of younger chasers that parked near us who were hooping and hollering cheering until I told them to shut up that this was a deadly storm. No gear on their car though, might have been locals.
Chris Hayes
EF5
I was on the Mulvane tornadofest also. Whenever we would pull over to take video it would be on a side road or parking lot. I never saw anyone blocking fire trucks. What they fail to tell is that the LOCALS are the ones who D*** around and end up screwing up things for the responsible chasers such as ourselves :twisted:I think the local residents are more of an intended target of articles like this than the hobbyist chasers. When you think about it most of these towns where the alleged problems with traffic impeding emergency vehicles have occurred have much higher populations than the entire hobbyist chaser community. Over 99% of all the people who are ever going to see this article aren't hobbyist or scientist or media chasers. So I just see this media campaign as an attempt to convince more local residents to stay home if they're already there when the tornado warnings are issued.
Of course that doesn't mean I exactly agree with this media campaign - nobody has any more of a right to travel down a non-closed road than anyone else - but it's just my opinion on what I think articles like this are trying to accomplish.John Diel
EF5
Surprisingly good article
I think this one went out of the way to distinguish "Chasers" from "Locals". They've got quotes from people on both sides of the fence and they were pretty articulate about it.
JohnShane Adams
Oh for damn certain I have some comments...
ON June 12, we called in every tornado we saw that day, sometimes screwing up video (as I did with the first Mulvane tornado) to scramble and find the report hotline numbers. We called in the second Mulvane tornado (which was the one that destroyed the two-story SE of town) about a minute after it formed (still west of the saddle club that was severely damaged) and ICT didn't even know about it.
On May 29, we witnessed a local ICT media satellite truck (I have this on video) scream past us like we were standing still, and we were doing highway speeds. Later in the evening, the same satellite truck tried to run a roadblock on KS49, a few miles north of US160, to the point where the officer had to run acros the road and physically step in front of their truck to stop them. I was about 20 feet away watching this, so I know.
Yet this article (like all the other crap coming from the Wichita area paper medium in the past few weeks) insists on targeting chasers as the problem.
WAKE THE HELL UP PEOPLE
Locals are your problem. These 'chasers' your sherriff and other authorities are encountering, they aren't chasers, they're locals who think they're chasers. They wait around until something's close and then they pounce on it like a panther, then claim experience and talent got them their prize......BULLSHIT. They are local yocals who sit on their collective asses waiting for storms to come near because they couldn't forecast their way to the beach in San Diego in July.
You reporters (and I know SOMEONE with Eagle ties is reading this) need to learn the difference between what a chaser is, and what a local is. Because if you ruin things for chasers through your HORRIDLY inaccurate reporting, I'll personally come up to ICT and set the record straight.....and when I'm done, you'll have plenty to write about.JHadorn
EF4
Eh. I think shit like this comes with the territory. It's sensationalism at its finest on a slow news day.Mike Umscheid
This article does not point the finger at veteran or dedicated storm chasers, thus I do not feel like this article is talking about me, or Greg Stumpf, Shane Adams, or the many other dedicated storm chasers/videographers/photographers that make up our wonderful community. This is more of a slam at Joe Sixpack who is watching the news and sees a tornado warning or tornado on TV and wants to go out and see it for himself.
Wichita is a not-too-far-behind second to the OKC Metro for yahoo chasers, gawkers, whatever you want to call them... which is highly tied to the sensationalism brought on by the endless minutes of non-stop information brought on by TV and Radio media. The Wichita market is big big BIG on severe weather. Just like OKC. It shouldn't surprise anyone that the gawkers will be out around a 60 mile radius of Wichita... in droves... during the peak of the season... let alone after the fact that there were already two huge events before June 12th even happened.
This was not an article aimed at storm chasers... our community... IMHO. Just my thoughts.
Mike U
Amos Magliocco
EF5
I can't imagine a more damaging article about an isolated incident that buries the history of chasing and all the good that has come from it. Nor do I understand the well-known chasers who contribute sound bites to these stories. Are they not also part of the mayhem? Should I get off the road becuase they've been chasing five or ten or twenty years longer? Sorry, we're all in this boat together, and we're most definitely taking water.
You think that story doesn't make local politicians angry? Hell, it made me angry and I don't write legislation for a living, or have any relatives in Mulvane.
We need the senior veteran leadership of chasing to come out of their coven and help organize a response to things like this before we all wind up the favorite new targets of the Kansas State Police. They're the only ones who can do it. Some of us down here in the fourth generation have already tried. All chasers have a stake in this. I doubt any potential regulation is going to 'grandfather in' people who were chasing before the Twister Era.
Bill Tabor
EF5
Dude, I already replied to the author of that article and included info about what you and David Drummond were doing calling in the tornadoes first, along with good stuff other chasers were doing. I created a very, very long reply, and you probably know by now I can do it. I took almost every line in the article and debated it.
This is a crappy article and in my opinion is very damaging to chasers. It creates some new term 'Tornado Tourist'. I agree with Mike that they may be attempting to primarily describe the locals clogging the roadways but they don't make any distinction between them and other chasers. The Kansas police will not appreciate this type of info.
Also David, you mentioned that you didn't see people blocking the road at Mulvane. The article is a bit tricky in being sensational by opening with the Harper, KS tornado which is where the roads are actually blocked from people supposedly parking in the road, and the Mulvane tornado where the police had the roads blocked.
For those of you on the Harper storm - what did you see transpire? Are any of these allegations true?
Anyway it will be interesting to see what kind of reply I get.Shane Adams
Look at the title.....it's pretty much all-encompassing as far as the paper's audience is concerned. They may not be targeting serious chasers, but their misrepresentation of what chasers are makes it seem as if they are, which makes us all look bad in the end. And it's just another example of how the media screw things up for people.
Jeff Snyder
EF5
A quick comment about 6/12 Mulvane... I can say with complete certainty that the vast majority of 'real' chasers that I saw practiced very good driving/parking habits! Many folks who I either recognized as a chaser or "looked" to be a chaser parked completely off the roads and did other safe measures to ensure they weren't a part of the problem. I was very impressed by many of ya'll that I saw out there...
The REAL BIG problem that caused me a 45-minute traffic mess in Mulvane involved locals. In fact, there was one intersection of two relatively large roads/highways that caused such great frustration for me that I was ready to do some hardcore offroading (in my pontiac bonneville LOL). Alongside the road, near the intersection, were no less than 10-15 cars parked in front of the stop sign. Given the very narrow shoulder and relatively steep drop-off beyond the shoulder, many of these people who parked here did so with their vehicles 1/2 of the way into the lane. Then, as I finally got to near the actual intersection, there were more cars/vehicles parked, this time I noticed that every corner of the intersection had cars parked alongside it. Many of these seemed to be locals, but there were also several media vehicles (KSN News off the bat) that parked their cars practically IN the intersection. This, along with the fact that most were driving like 15-20mph through this intersection, attributed to both gawking as well as needing to swerve around those walking around IN the intersection, contributed to the 30 minutes I was near this intersection alone... My lesson that I learned: I will NEVER again drive in, through, or near a town, no matter how small, that has been hit by a tornado. Why? Not because I don't think I could ever offer help, since I obviously would if I saw no emergency crews, but the insane traffic that can develop is ridiculous.
I'm not in the position to say who can and who cannot chase, but gosh darnit, the traffic is frustrating sometimes... Huge props to the safe chasers this day, and 'shame on you!' to those non-emergency crews who decided to park half-way out in lanes on highways and block intersections!Shane Adams
While I was totally against the proposal to create a chaser association dedicated soley to combating this type situation, I have to agree with Amos' sentiments.....you veterans need to bring your bright white asses out of the pre-1995 dark and into the spotlight that is 2004 chaser relations and get our backs. You've been CFDGing us to death the past several years yet are still quick to critique any and every move we make without your approval.....time to shit or get off the pot. So what's up veterans? You gonna chip in for the greater good/cause, or are you gonna continue to huddle in privacy as our ranks are dragged throuh the mud?
Remember, YOUR asses are on the line this time as well :wink:
Bryan Burkholder
EF0
Another tidbit on June 12th.... We had arrived on the storm as the sun was going down and managed to see the tornado during nightfall/duck SE of Atlanta. While We were off on the side of a dirt road tripoding some lightning and trying to get pics there was a couple of people that pulled up to us and asked us how to get back to Wichita. They said they had driven all the way from Wichita to see the storm. I wasnt really sure what to say to them. We basically just told them how to get back home and they went on their merry way. It just kinda took me afar that they thought driving to Atlanta was a long ways... and that they lived in Wichita and were locals there...
Also, we kept hearing about people flocking to see damage that was done in Mulvane on the local radio broadcast. That's just horrible with people flocking from nearby cities just to gawk at damage done by nature. Unless they are certified Emergency relief people EMT's, volunteers, or such, they have no business dawdling around. It is noble to try and help out, but you do get in the way at some point when it is not your community that is involved.
But as long as human curiosity is sparked, there will always be locals that will take a look around, and I am not one to say they are not allowed to, because it is a free country. They have as much a right of being out there as we do. They may not understand everything they are seeing, but they probably know the road network much better than any of us do and it is their area
.mrobinson
I agree there has to be something to counter this type of publicity. I don't think the article was fair in that it didnt really say the difference between locals and chasers, in fact I got the impression that unless you were out there with the media or a researcher you were who they were complaining about.
I thought Scott Roberts was supposed to do a positive story about keeping locals off the roads and putting chasers in a positive light. As far as not talking to the press to give soundbites thats kinda tricky because nobody really said anything that was bad about chasers. Its when people make comments that the media can twist to use against us there is an issue. Without those soundbites we really have no say and since the vets are not coming out of the closet on this issue its up to the people who are being quoted for media stories to be very careful in what they say so that it does not get taken out of context.
I really think there needs to be some sort of media campaign to set the record straight about the differences between local and chaser.Similar threads
