Anyone read ABC news article about Mena, AR tornado?

[Toni Scholz]

We have similar problems here in the Dallas / Fort Worth Texas area also. It is not a "Cry Wolf" situation. It is simply the situation that there are incredibly way too many people who do not want the media to interrupt their regular programming..."

Tom - You've absolutely hit the nail on the head regarding this issue. Although I can't find the link, ABC had a similar situation after the planes hit the twin trade towers on 9/11. They had a small number of phone calls from individuals who were apparently upset that their regular television shows (Jerry Springer, no doubt), were preempted by coverage of the attack.

Having said that, I will admit there has been an occasion where I've been miffed by being "inconvenienced" by a traffic delay due to an accident. What was my interest? Me....

I'm not defending those folks who took the time to complain; just a perspective that we're more alike than I care to admit sometimes.

 

[Damon Poole]

Ed Buckner and the rest of the Little Rock TV mets did their jobs competently, and as they should have. Unfortunately there is a very loud minority who like to raise nine kinds of Cain because their programming is interrupted for wall to wall severe weather. The problem is, in Arkansas, these are the same people who can't get enough of the Arkansas Razorbacks on TV and radio and insist that the same programming they claim to miss, be interrupted by every Hog touchdown or 3 pointer, or every bit of drama out of Fayetteville. One year, Saturday morning cartoons were interrupted because a Razorback head coach was rumored to supposedly be leaving "The Pro-grayam", and having a much balleyhooed press conference, which never happened. With that mentality, who cares if a tornado wipes out Mena if Arkansas is trailing by two touchdowns in the 4th? To them, that takes precedence over life and property. That's the kind of hypocracy that makes me sick.

 

[Melissa Jablonski]

Our stations are good at coverage

We have two really good tv stations for weather coverage in the Soth Bend
area. WSBT and WNDU do areally good job. Mike Hoffman on WNDU and Rick Mecklenberg from Wsbt both have good teams and all of the other meteoroligists on the stations do a really good job too. They break into programs to track storms. They tell people why and that public safty comes first. Hats off to all of them.
Melissa

 

[Larry J. Kosch]

That's not half as bad as an excited eye-witness after a storm that he said "one man here has several broken legs!!"

You see that casual attitude some folks takes toward tornado warnings. You blow the siren once too often, they will simply shrug it off. Then the tornado REALLY hits. You really need to heed the warnings. And not the kind that was supposed to hit the ground level. LJK.

 

[John Robinson]

In Mena, *every* person interviewed by the survey team said they had heard the sirens blow. Some said they had specifically turned on their TVs for more information because of the sirens. As for the sheriff's comments: A previous tornado that came in from Oklahoma had dissipated in the mountains to the northwest of Mena less than 30 minutes before the Mena tornado began...and the Mena tornado did begin just a very few miles outside the city.

 

[J Holder]

Ask any number of 911 dispatchers about the calls they take during tornado warnings from the mental midgets wanting to know why the tornado sirens are going off.

These people are living proof that God has a sense of humor, becasue he's got to be laughing his butt off watching them.

 

[Darren Addy]

I wonder if it would help if the public could be trained to view tornado warnings like they viewed air raid warnings in WWII years. (Not in the U.S. unfortunately... or would that be fortunately ). In an air raid situation, the damage from dropping bombs would definitely be hit and miss, but few people took that attitude that "since I've never been hit before when these sirens go off, I'm not going to bother going to my shelter this time".

Honestly, I don't spend a lot of time worrying about this stuff. If people don't know enough to protect themselves in the event of tornado sirens going off, then maybe we really don't need them in the gene pool.