Greensburg vs Parkersburg in media attention donation etc

Bill Hark

Bill Hark

EF5
Joined
Jan 13, 2004
Messages
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Location
Richmond Virginia
A comment on a different thread (Storms of xxx) raises an interesting question. Why did the Greensburg disaster receive much more attention than the more recent Parkersburg tornado? What aspects of a large weather-related disaster will cause it to receive the most attention (donations, volunteers etc.) in a general sense. There have been many disasters over the years with variable publicity. There are obvious factors such as number of deaths, area affected, strength of the tornado, but I suspect there are other factors that are less well-known. Preliminary thoughts include area of the country, other news going on, recent disasters that may cause disaster fatigue, demographics of those affected and even the location's PR machine of getting the word about and media coverage. I guess media coverage translates into more donations. Just random thoughts. I'll post later after I have time to think.

Bill Hark
 
I have noticed this too, and the main reason I could think of is that when an area of a town gets destroyed it's a big deal. But when an entire down (okay, okay, 95% of a town) is destroyed, people are going to here more about it. I actually don't know how much of Parkersburg was hit (again due to the lack of media attention), but an entire town being wiped away in minutes is going to make a lot more headlines.
 
Bill Hark said:
other news going on, recent disasters that may cause disaster fatigue
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Those are the two big ones. Last year, we didn't have all the stuff regarding the election. Also, keep in mind the relative "uniqueness" of Greensburg. That was the first EF-5 in almost 10 years, so of course, it would get a ton of attention. On a side note, does anybody remember all that grumbling along the lines of, "OMG there will never be another EF-5 thanks to this crappy, new EF scale!" :rolleyes:

I can't remember if it was before, after, or the same day, but Parkersburg was way overshadowed by the Boy Scout camp. Then, there was all the flooding in Iowa, too.

Comparing these two events, I don't think it was so much disaster fatigue as there were a lot of other big weather stories this year. May and June 2008 were considerably more active in overall weather than May-June 2007...I think. If I'm wrong, I blame the fact that I'm 26...the memory kind of goes with age.:D
 
I think the "easy answer" is that there was a considerable amount of incredible chaser footage from May 4th last year. The footage combined with the fact that Greensburg was wiped out was sort of a self-sustaining thing for a while, meaning, if there had been incredible footage with no town being wiped out, we wouldn't have been seeing the footage being played as much, and, as illustrated by the Parkersburg case, if a town gets wiped out but there's not a lot (or any) incredible footage, the story is basically dropped after a day or two. Imagine what the lack of media attention would have been like if those surveillance videos hadn't surfaced.
 
The Greensburg tornado occured in KS and the Parkersburg tornado occured in Iowa. More chasers like KS so on a chaser site any EF-5 in KS will recieve more attention then one in IA or IL etc. For a EF-5 tornado it still should have been discuss alot more in the weather community but most chasers only care about what goes on in TX,OK,KS,NE and SD because that is where most chasers live. When it comes to OK I realy do not care much about the tornadoes there unless it is a historic event just because I do not live there. I am sure most chasers are the same way about IA because they do not live here. So it is not as inportant to them. If the Parkersburg tornado occured in Moore or Tulsa OK I bet we would have seen half of the members here discussing it. As far as news coverage or media they did not have a lot of coverage on this historic tornado. My guess would be due to other news stories taking the spotlight.
 
I've seen more presentations at met conferences on Parkersburg than Greensburg this year - so I don't think your claim that the weather community ignores is valid. If you are using ST as your judge - remember this is the chase side, not the met side.
 
I think there is some valdidity to this. For example, the Picher, OK tornado from this year wasn't an EF5, but destroyed almost the whole town. The media response to this was unbelievable. I can't count how many satellite trucks I observed. FOX sent me up in the helicopter and there was a lot of aerial traffic as well. I believe the same thing can be said with hurricanes. Ike hit houston, and did considerable damage. The death toll was dramatically less. New Orleans and Houston are much different cities, but it's still a hurricane hitting a major city. The attention Ike was given afterward lasted very shorter.
 
This is just one man's opinion, but I stand by it. The media is overwhelmingly tilted towards a liberal bias. After Greensburg was hit...and was then dragged kicking and screaming into rebuilding "green"....it was only natural that the media blessed this with incessant coverage.
 
joel ewing said:
This is just one man's opinion, but I stand by it. The media is overwhelmingly tilted towards a liberal bias. After Greensburg was hit...and was then dragged kicking and screaming into rebuilding "green"....it was only natural that the media blessed this with incessant coverage.
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I would agree with that to a point but there was immense coverage the days following Greensburg and that barely happened in Iowa. I think the 2 main reasons have been posted already and I will add 2 more.

1. 1st EF-5 in a decade
2. Tons of chaser footage
3. The great work and dire forwarning from DDC NWS (tornado emergency)
4. Bigger news (elections).
 
Good points - and to add:

2) Very little chaser reports, not really until John Mc from KCCI flew over the next day was the full extent realized

4) Happened on a Sunday, vs Friday, so much less in the way of available news resources and lower viewer count nationally.
 
Jay McCoy said:
1. 1st EF-5 in a decade
2. Tons of chaser footage
3. The great work and dire forwarning from DDC NWS (tornado emergency)
4. Bigger news (elections).
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I agree especially with two and three. More importantly number three. Every chaser for the most part was in Kansas chasing that landspout and brief tornado near Bison, while maybe 1% of the other chasers out there were scattered through the Midwest. I have seen probably 3 chasers videos from ST alone from Iowa. I probably missed some somewhere, but it wasn't a lot.

With DDC, they were literally up to the minute with coverage and that saved many many lives. While I don't know for sure how DVN or DMX ran their operations this day, I am pretty confident in saying they didn't go to the extremes that DDC did. Even though there is nothing wrong about what the Iowa forecast offices, they got the point across and provided early warning and that's all you could ask for. From a media standpoint however, the fact that DDC went above and beyond to save this little town is a great story and a good promotion and positive endorsement to WFO's after many receive criticism for not providing enough lead time or not issuing a warning at all.

Relatively speaking Parkersburg tornado was a narrow (comparatively speaking) but intense tornado as it hit Parkersburg and New Hartford only to widen to Greensburg-like width as it was exiting NE Cedar Falls.

AVERAGE PATH WIDTH: PATH WIDTH RANGED FROM 0.6 TO 0.7 MILES NEAR
PARKERSBURG TO JUST NORTH OF NEW HARTFORD. THE PATH WIDTH CONSTRICTED
TO NEAR ONE QUARTER MILE WIDE EAST OF NEW HARTFORD TO NORTH OF
WATERLOO. PATH WIDTH INCREASED TO NEAR 1.2 MILES WIDE NORTH OF
DUNKERTON BEFORE DISSIPATING NEAR THE BLACK HAWK AND BUCHANAN
COUNTY LINE.
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Not to take away anything from this tragedy, but I think it was the southern quarter of the town being affected rather than the whole town, but once again tell that to the people directly affected. It seems the media feasted on the fact that Greensburg there was NOTHING left, but when it came to Parkersburg it was thrown into "Oh it was just another bad tornado, nothing close to Greensburg though" when in fact it could have been and still could be.

Interesting to see/hear how the area is coping as of this day.
 
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Not to take away anything from this tragedy, but I think it was the southern quarter of the town being affected rather than the whole town, but once again tell that to the people directly affected. It seems the media feasted on the fact that Greensburg there was NOTHING left, but when it came to Parkersburg it was thrown into "Oh it was just another bad tornado, nothing close to Greensburg though" when in fact it could have been and still could be.
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Danny has a good point. The whole town of Greensburg was almost totally wiped out rather than just a section of a town. That "completely destroyed thing" makes for more dramatic news. I also agree with the point about the media bias. There is nothing wrong with a media emphasis on rebuilding green and that should not be a liberal vs. conservative viewpoint. The rebuilding of Greensburg in a more "green" manner has helped the town stay in the media spotlight. I would guess that it also generates donations and grant money. Nothing wrong with that. Maybe something will be learned that will be applicable to building in other areas. It is a nice opportunity after a tragic event. I would call the Greensburg tornado a "perfect storm" of factors that came together for high levels of continuing publicity. The only thing that would have increased publicity would have been a daylight tornado that would have produced more video. I am glad that there has been extraordinary amounts of support for Greensburg and hopefully there will be more support for Parkersburg and other areas afflicted by recent and future disasters.

Bill Hark
 
Paul Stofer said:
I think there is some valdidity to this. For example, the Picher, OK tornado from this year wasn't an EF5, but destroyed almost the whole town. The media response to this was unbelievable. I can't count how many satellite trucks I observed. FOX sent me up in the helicopter and there was a lot of aerial traffic as well. I believe the same thing can be said with hurricanes. Ike hit houston, and did considerable damage. The death toll was dramatically less. New Orleans and Houston are much different cities, but it's still a hurricane hitting a major city. The attention Ike was given afterward lasted very shorter.
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Again, I'm not sure Picher is a good example regarding media coverage. Nationally, Picher has been in the news off-and-on because of the ongoing Tar Creek saga. When the tornado hit, pretty much the only people that were still living there were the people the were refusing to move. In this case, the town really was wiped off the map. I doubt very much will be rebuilt.
 
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MatthewCarman said:
For a EF-5 tornado it still should have been discuss alot more in the weather community but most chasers only care about what goes on in TX,OK,KS,NE and SD because that is where most chasers live. When it comes to OK I realy do not care much about the tornadoes there unless it is a historic event just because I do not live there. I am sure most chasers are the same way about IA because they do not live here. So it is not as inportant to them. If the Parkersburg tornado occured in Moore or Tulsa OK I bet we would have seen half of the members here discussing it.
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Your comparisons with Moore or Tulsa aren't really good comparisons because those are major metro areas. If an EF-5 (or any tornado) ripped through a major metro area in any part of the country, I guarantee it will get a lot of attention. Look at the coverage regarding downtown Atlanta.

In a way, Parkersburg can be compared to a nighttime tornado. Nighttime tornadoes don't get a lot attention from the chase community, but that's because most people don't chase them...sort of like how most chasers (at least the ones on this site) rarely chase in Iowa because it's an area that's hard to reach for them. Yes, Greensburg was at night, but I've never seen a nighttime tornado documented like Greensburg, so it's something of an anomaly.

As previously mentioned, Greensburg has stayed in the news mainly because of the amount of destruction and the whole "going green" thing.

There were several noteworthy weather events this year in a very short amount of time, whereas Greensburg was pretty much the "only" show for quite awhile. Take a look at this timeline if you don't believe me.

May 22, 2008: Greely, CO
May 24, 2008: Hog farm video in Oklahoma
May 25, 2008: Parkersburg, IA
May 29, 2008: Kearney, NE (and the "Red Light Incident")
June 11, 2008: Little Sioux Boy Scout Camp, IA
Most of June 2008: Midwest flooding

Again, this is looking at it from the chasing side of things only. From the news side of things, 2007 was a "slow" news year in the U.S. In 2008, Parkersburg has fallen victim to the news of the presidential election. I mean, you would hardly know that we are in a war right now with all the news regarding the election and economy.
 
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