Hurricaine Rita Fizzles

CLASS 5 HURRICAINE DEVASTATES TEXAS AND LOUISIANA! If you have been paying attention to the news this is the headline you were expecting a few days ago. Yet, evan as it became apparent that this would not be the case as hurricaine Rita slowed to a class 4, then a class 3 storm, the newspeople would not relent in their predictions of possible disaster and perhaps even another major city being destroyed.

Give me a break. We get class 3 hurricaines all the time. Even New Orleans would have been fine if Katrina had only been a class 3. However, the media chose to ride the wave of concern following the devastation of New Orleans and promote Rita as the next major disaster. This was ghoulish, but plausible as long as Rita was a class 5, heck it was a powerful class 5 at that, but once all that power fizzled out and it started to get weaker fast the responsible thing would have been to treat it like any normal huricaine. Of course there was no way that would happen. Sensationalizing the normal makes news, and news is ratings. Besides, the major news organizations had so much invested in this "devastating storm" that couldn't afford to back off.

This happens with every hurricaine. The fact is that most of these storms don't devastate anything, though they are destructive. Personally, I don't think anything below a class 4 hurricaine needs to be the primary story of the week, or two weeks on the national level. There is so much going on that important stuff gets ignored in favor of telling Alaskans, Mainers, Oregonians, and other people in such places hurricaines don't hit all about a storm in the Gulf of Mexico. However, to be fair, I must acknowledge that there is a giant segment of the American populaton in the area that hurricaines do hit, and they are very interested in these storms. So, naturally, the local news is all over these storms, and the national news covers them because it is these people who are riveted to their television screens, in other words, ratings, duh!

Truth be told, I ususally don't bother with much news during a hurricaine week. I catch just enough to know how strong it is and where it's going. I don't loose any news this way either. Hurricaine weeks are lost weeks for television news. Thank God for newpapers, magazines, and the internet.

I don't want to minimize any hurricaine. I just think it's important to acknowledge the fact that they happen regularly and that the areas they affect are usually designed to withstand them, so all but the most powerful hurricaines should have a minimum impact on the areas they hit. There will be damage, and people may die, and this is sad. But it is not a national disaster. The destruction of New Orleans is a disaster. Hurricaine Andrew was a disaster. The 9/11 attacks were a disater. Pearl Harbor was a disaster. Hurricaine Rita was hyped up as a disaster, then turned out to be, well, not a disaster. Yet, even as it became more and more apparrent that Rita would not be the devastating storm it was predicted to be the news people just had to behave as if it was a cloud of nukes descending upon some poor city that was bound to be crushed under waves and flooded out by the rains. Come on, feeding panic never helped anyone, don't do it unless it really needs to be done.