The thing I find more interesting is, exactly where is the line for a chaser report (or anything for that matter) to be considered "direct" VS "indirect"? How technical are we going to be about the definition? I've heard the overall opinion that chasers are never directly responsible for saving lives, not ever. At all. Our reports are merely a cog in a bigger machine of processes, and will always be considered "indirect". Okay.
On October 4, 1998 (and I'm sure I've told this story before on here, some of you charter members might remember) Matt Sellers and I stumbled onto a large tornado in progress west of Stillwater, OK. At the time, I had recently been chasing for KWTV in OKC, and still had all their report hot numbers. I figured they already knew, but I called it in anyway. The guy on the other end of the line was freaking out, asking "Where exactly? How big? Which way is it heading???" They had no clue about the tornado, and we were the first report across their wire.
A few days later at work, I saw a special on KWTV about that event. An older couple was on talking about how they had just sat down to eat dinner. They had the television on in the background, when suddenly Gary England came on with an urgent tornado warning for folks just west of Stillwater. The couple got up from dinner, walked to the front door of their trailer home, and looked outside. A tornado was barreling across the field directly towards them. They had just enough time to run to their shelter, before taking a direct strike that destroyed their home. They said they never would've gotten up if it weren't for Gary on the TV.
A few months later, while calling KWTV to see if they were interested in some tornado video we'd shot in Arkansas on the 1-21-99 event, Gary picked up the line and personally thanked us for calling in the Stillwater tornado; I hadn't even been talking with him and I never brought it up, it was all him.....which means it was a significant enough event that he remembered.
So I ask you all now......were we not, at least in part, directly responsible for saving those two lives? As much as any other piece of the warning process that day? If the answer is 'no', then I would have to reason that no part of the process is directly responsible for saving lives.
