News You Can Use (and Some You Shouldn’t)
By Porter Anderson (@Porter_Anderson) | September 15, 2017 |
Image – iStockphoto: Behind Lens
One More Way Social Media Can Lead You Astray
A funny thing happened on the way to this column: Hurricane Irma.
I’d checked in with Therese weeks ago and let her know that Jane Friedman (AKA “Porter’s Brain”) and I would like to alert you today to our annual flash sale on The Hot Sheet, our subscription newsletter for traditionally publishing and self-publishing authors. We offer 30 percent off each year on our anniversary, and today we’re at the second-year mark with our bi-weekly email analysis of the industry! the industry! expressly for authors. Code 2YR will get you the discounted rate, and we’d love to have you. There’s a 30-day free trial.
Jane has a quick summation of some of the types of news we’re handling in a handy post you can read at her site. The spot to subscribe is here. And our “No Drama, No Hype” slogan is something I’m almost as proud of as I am of our analysis.
But while getting ready to write about all this for Unboxed, I was almost Undone, of course, by the arrival in Florida of Irma.
I’ve never liked the name, have you?
In the course of my very long waltz with the National Hurricane Center in the past week, I’ve learned something about news and how we share it with each other in our business–and how we react to it. I’ve realized I’d like to bring this to you today.
First I’ll give you a mercifully brief account of my path through this thing, so you’ll know how I came to these lessons learned.
Forecast Models
On the road with Irma. Yes, that’s 6 miles per hour on the dashboard. Image: Cooper the Beagle
By the time Hurricane Irma had flattened the Caribbean islands, we in Tampa were aware that a couple of particularly bad scenarios were possible for the Gulf coast. The predicted “right-hand turn” occurred, the Keys were chewed up, and the storm started its siege of the peninsula, making Naples one of its showpieces of storm surge. The storm at some points stretched 650 miles from east to west.
Deep into Sunday night, the phenomenon observed at Tampa was as predicted. The waters of Tampa Bay and Old Hillsborough Bay were sucked out, creating eerie plough-mud flats where vast bodies of water are supposed to be. This is the pattern that we know precedes the surge’s inundation of a coastal plain when the counter-clockwise rotation of a hurricane’s energy shoves the Gulf of Mexico down our throats. Surge predictions ran between 3 and 8 feet (and atop a high tide). Anderson Cooper and his crew from CNN were in position across from the University of Tampa, ready to narrate our demise in a hit likely between Categories 1 and 2.
The storm, however, made a last-minute feint to the east, moving across the state to Orlando, Daytona, Jacksonville and up the lower East Coast, turning back inland as a tropical storm.
Zone A had been ordered to evacuate. I’d reserved a hotel room in Atlanta well in advance just in case. On Friday, a week ago today, September 9, as the evacuation orders went out, I put the beagle into the car and started driving north to Georgia along with thousands of others. Hotel rooms were booked out well beyond Alabama. Four lanes, a long bumper-to-bumper column, streamed up I-75. Many gas stations had no fuel. Speeds ranged from 6 to 70 miles per hour. We were allowed to use the left shoulder as a lane, but the state declined to permit “contraflow”–opening the southerly lanes for northward escapees–because military convoys and long lines of power-company trucks needed to roll south into position in Florida. The 7.5-hour drive to Atlanta took 16.5 hours.
By Monday, Atlanta was getting Tropical Storm Irma. Trees were falling onto the highways and power lines. The hotel and millions of other utility customers lost power. The beagle and I started “de-vacuation,” driving back to Tampa and an unknown situation there. This time the trip took 14.5 hours. The beagle was no help at the wheel.
I’m one of the lucky ones. My part of the city took minimal damage, lots of debris, broken trees, standing water, limited power outages. Others weren’t so lucky. As recently as yesterday, Thursday, the Red Cross was still serving hot meals to those who needed them at three points in Tampa. Businesses are re-opening now. The state, as a whole, is staggered. Don Trump has now inspected Florida’s misery and seems satisfied.
Provocation: Patience When It’s Hard
Provocations graphic by Liam Walsh
What I learned in this ridiculously exhausting, nerve-wracking disruption was that as literary colleagues, we’re sometimes not as kind as we think. That’s my gentle provocation for you today.
Social media makes it much too easy to pepper people you may not know well with good wishes, questions, demands for updates. Curiosity is natural. The long reach of the Internet is not. And while I hope not to seem ungrateful here for genuine concern in certain places, I’ve ended up with a short list of points about supporting each other during tough times.
We’re people of the word, after all. And the allure of that glowy device is so hard to resist (just ask Don). We want to issue our best phrases of loving concern, to feel that we’ve touched someone with our genius for bucking up the soul. I’ve done this, myself, to people. Now I know I wasn’t helping. So don’t feel badly if you’ve done it, too. It’s just too damned easy for us to forget that a crisis is, actually, a crisis, and the hands on the other end may be needed on the wheel, the storm shutter, the beagle, or the aching head more than on texts and tweets back to you to assure you that all is okay (or not).
- If you’re a genuine friend or family member, these rules don’t apply, of course. You’ll be in touch as you need to be with your person in the storm.
- But if you’re a colleague, a co-worker, an acquaintance, it actually is counter-productive for you to start messaging that person-in-the-storm with questions about how high is the water and how low are his spirits. Whether running for it or “sheltering in place,” that person needs to focus on the mess at hand.
- So unless you’re in the first classification of a close one, give that person in trouble–of whatever kind–the space he or she needs to handle the emergency. Power may well be in short supply. Messages from acquaintances aren’t a good use of what little battery may be left.
- If you’re able to make a directly helping move, tell, don’t ask: “Hey. I’m finishing that edit for you, forget about it for now, focus there. No answer needed. Stay safe.” You’ll get gratitude later.
- If you’re not sure whether you’re needed: sit tight. Your person will contact you. They know you’re there. Hold your fire.
- Don’t be clueless. People who asked “Is something going on in Florida?” deserve a sago palm in their kitchen.
- Don’t minimize the situation. “Well, nothing happened in your town!” is totally unhelpful. Your person has gone through something, even if ending up lucky. Next time I may hire a copter to airlift me off the roof, just so I can keep people from acting as if we didn’t perform what some reports say was the largest evacuation in American history. Nowhere in the Southeast got a pass from this thing.
- And don’t joke. Like our emergency services, the various news media (that was not hype), especially my CNN colleagues, did an extremely good job of putting across what was going on, but they couldn’t tell you the individual struggles underway in the wind and rain and surges. Our death toll in Florida alone is has passed 40, in the Caribbean, 44. Think before you sass.
Especially in the kind of extended “family” of writers in which so many of us are lucky to live today, it’s easy, I learned, for folks to overreach. And again, I’ve done it, myself. It may be harder for authors and other writers–because we are all about expression–to remember that there are times to stop expressing.
What’s been your experience of this? Have you found yourself having to act like a one-person news medium to a host of distant contacts during an emergency or tough experience? Any tips on letting folks know without honking them off that they need to stand down for a while?
And do take advantage of my and Jane’s discount code 2YR today to test us out for 30 days at The Hot Sheet. We’ll only drop into your inbox every two weeks. Like well-restrained social contacts.
[coffee title=”Wish you could buy Porter a glass of Campari?” icon=”glass”]Now, thanks to tinyCoffee and PayPal, you can![/coffee]
@Porter_Anderson is a fellow of the National Critics Institute. He is Editor-in-Chief of Publishing Perspectives, the international news medium of Frankfurt Book Fair. He co-founded The Hot Sheet, a newsletter for trade and independent authors, which now is owned and operated by Jane Friedman. Priors: The Bookseller‘s The FutureBook in London, CNN, CNN.com and CNN International–as well as the Village Voice, Dallas Times Herald, and the United Nations’ WFP in Rome. is a recipient of London Book Fair’s International Excellence Award for Trade Press Journalist of the Year. PorterAndersonMedia.com
First, a shout out for The Hot Sheet. It’s such a valuable and interpretative compilation of the industry’s changes, and one of the few pieces of mail I look forward to receiving in my inbox. I hope many here take advantage of the 30-day trial to at least get a sense of what you and Jane are doing there. (Thank you!)
I’m glad you, your beagle, and your home survived the storm mostly unscathed, Porter, and I think you raise valuable points here. We writers *are* expressers, but sometimes we need to be as quiet as a hurricane’s eye.
I’ve never had to relay a nature-made crisis-in-progress. Once, when I was in the midst of a medical crisis (that turned into a non-crisis, thankfully), my husband signed on as the point person. Anyone with questions went directly to him, and he managed everything. That would be my advice to anyone feeling overwhelmed with questions from people who care, but who don’t have the time or the energy to respond personally: Assign a point person, and do what you can to keep that person apprised of what’s happening, within reason.
However much I liked the name Irma before the storm, I like it a lot less now.
Hey, Therese,
Thanks so much for the kind words about The Hot Sheet–we’re psyched that so many authors (and others in the industry) are using it now as their news source. We think it helps that it just comes every two weeks. You read it, then get back to writing, beats searching for news online.
And I love your idea of a point person to take over the comms during a crisis. I’m putting the beagle into training for this immediately, lol, it’s really a super way to handle it.
Seriously, I know now (too late!) that I’ve done this same thing to people in stress before, myself. It seems like the nice thing to do and we all want to help. Live and learn, huh?
Thanks again — and yeah, now I fear for some of my favorite old names that I’m sure are going to turn up on the Hurricane Center’s list. Both Harvey and Irma are now being retired, by the way. Once one goes big, it’s done. So “Irma” will be okay for use again after we all get over things….which may be a while.
Cheers!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Porter, good advice. I am glad you and the beagle survived. Evacuating with pets is hard. Our son is in Ave Maria (about 30 miles east of Naples) but we encouraged him to stay, hunker down and help, esp. since at the time we didn’t know whether we’d have to evacuate from Chs given Irma could’ve come up the FL/GA coastline like Matthew did the year before. As it is, Chs suffered quite a bit of flooding.
Of course, what turned out better for us was terrible for others but thank goodness for the regular updates from the President at Ave, which were both reassuring and calm. https://www.avemaria.edu/hurricane-irma-updates/ I post the link here for people who wish to read something resembling sanity. What a contrast to the news on TV, which made me horribly anxious. I forgot that my worries can’t do a blasted thing, that my time is better spent in prayer and preparation. I did eventually, and bless the Lord, it was the only thing that brought peace. We prayed for all in Irma’s path. Fervently. But that TV watching had to go. It’s only been a couple of days since I’ve not been turning on the TV and the supernatural peace is returning. Our son did finally get in touch once power was restored and I’m very proud of him for manning up, helping secure and clean up, take care of others who were less fortunate. Bless them all. He was thrilled to meet Marco Rubio and Mike Pence.
Hi, Vijaya,
Thanks for the great message.
I believe that Ave Maria is the school that so kindly took in a group of nursing home patients (among many others) and took care of them during the storm, right? Wonderful effort – and I learned about if from TV news. :)
That’s all probably easier for me since I was with CNN for so many years. I know it’s terribly rattling to many.
Looks as if the school was doing a really good job of updating info for parents and others during the ordeal, that’s just great.
(Did you see the story about the nun from another school who got out into the street with her chainsaw after the storm to help clear some downed trees? You Catholics are great in a storm zone!. Here’s the story in case you hadn’t seen it, Sister Margaret Ann from Archbishop Coleman Carrol High. https://edition.cnn.com/2017/09/12/us/cnn-nun-chainsaw-irma-miami-erin-burnett-outfront-cnntv/index.html )
Really sorry for all the water that Charleston took, I was watching that — JAX got such a heavy hit, too, way past anything they’d seen there before.
What a rough experience for everyone. So glad your son did so well. Hope the cleanup is going well for you guys in CHS,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Porter, thanks for the links and the kind words. And yes, the field house and oratory at Ave became a shelter. It was designed to withstand a Cat 5 but I was glad not to see them put to the test. The Caribbean islands were flattened. Devastating. Because I’m not in the habit of turning on the TV it was a sensory assault. I do much better with print media. But you are right to point to some of the very heartwarming stories of people helping one another.
Americans are hardy and seem to have a natural sense of volunteerism. A trucker we know of is bringing supplies to FL. A little girl in our neighborhood had a lemonade stand to raise money for victims of Harvey. And there’ve been special collections at church to help monetarily.
I pray your recovery goes well. We are blessed to live in the US. I never take it for granted.
Agree completely, Vijaya, I think that both in Harvey and Irma, the outpouring of assistance has been nothing short of astonishing, really magnificent instances of selfless, often risky efforts.
I’ve been particularly glad that these events have helped tamp down the usual disdain for people who didn’t evacuate.
I’m not that type, as you can tell — I believe in evacuating when the experts believe that’s the right move, though I’m a very devoted Floridian. (I still believe that expertise and satellite telemetry is better than gut instinct, lol).
But normally, we see a great castigation of those who stay behind and get into trouble. However, in this case, I’ve seen next to no such criticism. If somebody’s in trouble, six people jump into a boat to go get them, no questions asked.
Not to sound at all spiritual about it (that’s your department, lol), it has seemed at times during both these storms that many people were really needy of a chance to be a help somehow, to show they cared. That may be a misplaced interpretation on my part, but time and again, I’ve seen people responding not just willingly but eagerly to the situations around them.
It’s been a year full of negativity, most of it coming from our direly warped political situation. Outreach and fellow feeling are great balms at such times, and it’s been good to see the satisfaction on many faces as they succeeded in making a rescue, finding a dog, helping a child, reassuring a family.
Thanks again!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Porter, I’ve always thought Americans jump at the chance to help. They are doers, not just talkers. That’s just one of many things I admire. When we first moved to the US (I was 14 at the time) I noticed how organized people could be so that larger scale help can be given. You’d never see this in India–people can’t even make a line–though you see a lot of neighbor helping neighbor.
And I was glad to see that people who stayed behind (many couldn’t afford to go anywhere, there wasn’t any fuel) weren’t criticized. I know of some nursing home residents down in Texas who were evacuated to Houston, but then Houston was flooded so they had to be moved again. And how in the world do you get millions of people out of big cities like Houston or Miami?
I do want to say that the divisiveness we’ve seen has always been there festering–only the election brought it to the surface. I think of it like an infection. But like in any infection, bringing a problem to the surface is often the beginning of healing. And these natural disasters may well be the balm we need to begin to love another again.
I came across Walker Percy’s Theory of Hurricanes and he may well have a point! https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/09/books/review/walker-percys-theory-of-hurricanes.html?mwrsm=Facebook
I recently have endured many, many hours behind the wheel–with our dog on board, as well–but, mercifully, often at the legal speed limit of 80MPH. (Thank you Wyoming.) Slogging at 2MPH, though, is torture.
So is being without power. Experienced that for a week in NYC during Hurricane Sandy.
Writing can feel like that too, but perhaps the lesson is that hurricanes do pass, power does return, and sometimes the highway is a breeze.
It’s all part of the journey. Glad you’re okay, Porter. I see your rain of words was not impaired by the rain of rain…uh, well, you know what I mean.
Hey, Don, and thanks so much for the note. Yes, indeed, you’re on a road trip that continues until the kids are in college, right? :) Seriously, I used to like road trips, lol, now I’m qualifying that one in my mind, haha.
My dog was great company, I must say, and handled it remarkably well considering the stress and strangeness of the whole affair. But he’s no good at taking the wheel or checking directions or looking up places that have gas, etc., lol. 80 mph sounds like heaven. I kept thinking of the Audubon as I crawled along in the single digits.
You’re right in all ways, and I’m fully the lucky one. I didn’t lose life or property, just basically endured some extreme inconvenience, some pretty significant fear, and (you know me) relentless distraction from work. I was keeping the daily edition coming out at Publishing Perspectives and generally trying to handle the usual comms with our correspondents, etc., and clearly wasn’t quite Superman enough to pull it all off.
The words, yes. When it rains it pours. :)
Thanks, Don.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Hi Porter,
Your advice is spot-on. After Superstorm Sandy, we didn’t have power, phone service, or heat (it was November in NJ) for three weeks and a huge water-soaked mess in our home beyond that. What limited times I had cell phone service, I needed it for conversations with insurance agents, FEMA, and our contractors. And we weren’t hit nearly as hard as many others.
So my heart goes out to all those in the Southeast now dealing with the aftermath. No matter how much or how little damage you might have incurred, the storm and the cleanup take a huge psychological toll. I couldn’t write for weeks! All I wanted was to sleep in my own bed and feel normal again. It took awhile. Love to all those now dealing with it. And you’re right. They don’t need the rest of us pestering them about it.
Off to check out the Hot Sheet! Cheers!
Hi, Mary,
Really appreciate your note. You’re the second Sandy victim to really chime in for me in the last few days with a lot of very accurate understanding of the effects of these things. It’s like being shell-shocked, isn’t it?
Our closest supermarket reopened late yesterday (Friday)–still with empty shelves where the water jugs should be, of course–and, I swear, everybody in the store was walking around with a look of sort of vacant confusion. We’re still less than a week since the second US landfall, of course, but I’m finding it amazing how traumatized everyone is, even those of us who have no visible signs of serious loss or damage like what you went through.
AND it’s warm, at least! I don’t know how you handled the cold. That may be the one saving grace of a storm in the tropics, at least you don’t freeze to death, lol. One of the oddest effects during the second evacuation (from Atlanta to get back into Florida) was how cold I felt after getting soaked at a gas pump by sideways rain. Couldn’t have been less than 75 degrees, and yet I was baffled by the psychological effect of feeling cold, I had to put some heat into the car while drying out.
As you say, there’s really a toll taken. It’s still catching me by surprise at various points, and all you want is to make things fall into place again–not so easy.
These are big energies, acts of war, natural disasters. They really rearrange your thinking and feelings, don’t they?
Thanks again for all your insights and understanding, it really helps.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Sometimes we all need to have our assumptions–that this attention in time of crisis is good and will help this person feel valued–questioned and even brought up short.
Just yesterday I posted something in Facebook about “spiritual exhibitionism,” that tendency in a crisis to turn the attention back on me and how I’m doing my part–which I know I have totally done before. (My exact post: “If I pray for victims of hurricanes and wildfires but I don’t post about it on social media, does God still hear my prayers?”)
And I think maybe what you’re talking about, unless it’s someone you really do know as a true friend or family member, is kind of the same thing. They want to make sure you know that they are kind and conscientious enough to think of you. Though it may not be a conscious thought on their part. But you’re absolutely right. It’s not something you have time for in a crisis. Even at 2 MPH, you need to watch the road.
Hey, Erin,
This is really perceptive, thank you, and I also appreciate the bit of nerve it takes to point this out. The folks who like to wave around their response and assistance seem to think that we won’t see the brag factor (and the effort to make a bad event somehow about them–we see this in Washington, of course, as certain figures try to get their fingerprints all over both Harvey and Irma).
I think I was lucky in terms of the folks who were getting in touch with me that there wasn’t too much self-serving impulse there. I did feel that there was some disaster-digging going on, for sure, the “tell me one good fact about some awful thing you’ve just seen so I can amaze my friends with ‘Porter just saw three trees come down on I-295!'”
The alarmists of the world are a special breed, aren’t they? Funny how we used to know that term and use it more — an alarmist — than we do now. They thrive on worry, fear, danger, exaggeration. It’s a form of gossip, true alarmism, and I did feel that a couple of people were looking for some good crisis-gossip they could spread around.
I love your humility, too. Just as you’re aware you’ve engaged in “spiritual exhibitionism,” you could see me in this piece having to concede that I’ve made this mistake, myself, of making unnecessary contact with people in bad circumstances. We learn these mistakes only by making them, it seems, which is why I can’t really come down too hard on people who wander into this kind of behavior. I’ve been there before they were.
We’re complicated creatures, aren’t we? lol Thanks again for these excellent insights and honesty, Erin, really appreciated.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Hi Porter, Glad you made it okay with the evacuation and storm. I’m on the east coast of FL and we hardly had any news reporting about our area but we in Melbourne were right in the path of a huge arm of Irma that extended from Miami. Really tough ride for about 10 hours. I didn’t really have a problem with communications per se, but I think a lot of folks didn’t think we were affected much because we were on the other side of the eye. I can tell you it was rough going when the eye of Irma was hitting Fort Myers and I was thinking, “Omg, what’s gonna happen when that monster gets closer.” All in all, we had minor damage but the most damage I have ever had to my property during a hurricane. I’m thankful. I think it would be good to tell others that it was a huge storm that affected each and every Floridian, no matter where he or she lives. Thank you for your post.
Gosh, Wendy, we were 500 miles away from the eye and felt the wrath of Irma. It was a monster of a storm and I knew ALL of FL would feel it no matter where it made landfall.
Exactly, Vijaya.
Absolutely, Vijaya. But Thank God we all made it through.
Hi, Wendy,
I really appreciate your note! In fact, I’ve just heard from a colleague in Seattle who had been told by a Melbourne friend what a terrible time you guys had and without any decent reporting on it.
Having worked for so long at CNN, I know something about why this was happening, too. The surprise, sudden shift on Sunday night toward you guys from the west coast really caught all the networks off guard. And once the thing is in place and moving, re-positioning those crews is almost impossible. A lot of them could end-run it by making a northwest-then-east circle (up I-75, then over) and get to JAX in time, but moving them across on i-4 was unsafe (and too slow), of course, so a lot of you guys have been under-reported by all but the over-stretched local affiliates. That’s what we’ve learned a 650-mile storm can do and in a way it was a good lesson to a lot of us who think we’re so savvy about these storms.
We have a similar–not as serious as yours–situation in Tampa, in that once the sudden turn happened, everybody decided, “Oh, well, Tampa had no problem at all,” and of course that’s hardly true. Closest supermarket just re-opened here yesterday, still with its water shelves empty, the Red Cross is still handing out food and water to people.
Sorry about the damage you took. It’s really hard getting anything worked on because resources are so thin, too. Hope you’re managing. And yes, the bottom line is that all 20 million Floridians and a lot of people in other Southeastern states–let alone the Caribbean!–were affected by this. No one got away scot-free from this one.
Thanks so much, all the best with what you’re facing.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Well said! Going to keep this short because you probably have a million things to attend to post-Irma!
Great of you to leave a note, Carol, thanks for reading and dashing! :)
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Funny you should say that…I did think about you being in the path of Irma but decided that, as a business acquaintance, I wasn’t going to bug you with enquiries. I’m glad I did the right thing and that you came through unscathed. Thanks for the report–it was pretty interesting hearing from someone who went through the evacuation and return. One thing that worried me–what happened to the dolphins in Tampa Bay when the sea drained out?
Jane, you give a great example.
There has been an ongoing discussion in the grief community about death notifications on social media. There have been many stories – you may have even seen them – about people who announce a friend or colleague’s death…before all family members have been notified.
The community describes the “right” to post as a series of ripples. In the center are close family members. The first ripple is close friends, second ripple might be colleagues, etc. It’s sort of an effort to recognize your “place” in sharing information.
Porter describes this perfectly, although in a different context. We want to show that we care, to reach out to the person affected to let them know we support them (whether it’s ‘thoughts and prayers’ or something more tangible). The problem is that in a situation like Irma, very few people have the luxury or ability to respond to those outreach attempts. And we’re not only clueless about the experience itself, we’re tone deaf to the needs of those in the midst of it.
I, too, am glad Porter made it through this, though honestly, I was more worried about Cooper. ;)
Thanks for this, Viki, I think the grief model is very apt — it’s exactly the same kind of need for a hierarchical approach to communications in sensitive times.
Cooper is fine, though he’s been sleeping nonstop since we made it back, lol.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Hey, Jane,
Thanks for the note and for the perfect performance during the onslaught, very thoughtful! (And smarter than I’ve been about this in the past, I’m embarrassed to say!)
The dolphins question is such a good one. For the most part, these animals seem to be very aware of weather conditions affecting their waters and, dolphins being very fast, they’ll normally do a kind of evacuation of their own into deeper waters of the Gulf where it’s safer. We did get reports of a couple of dolphin strandings on the southerly west coast (Marco Island) and in those cases, a news crew or two jumped in to help, which is great. Here’s a story on that. https://thehill.com/homenews/media/350077-reporter-rescues-stranded-dolphins-after-hurricane-irma
Of more concern, it turns out, were some of our manatees, which are slower moving, heavier creatures. (And from the looks of them, not as smart as dolphins, but don’t tell them I said that, LOL.) There were several reports of manatees being stranded on the flats and of folks helping to rescue them. Nice story on that from NPR here: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/09/11/550164459/manatees-rescued-after-irma-leaves-them-high-and-dry-in-sarasota-bay
The other kind of stranding, lol, was motorists. As the evacuations rolled up the state (Florida is evacuated south-to-north because the south will be hit first, of course), pretty much the whole state ran out of gas / petrol for cars. It became one of Florida’s biggest issues, with the governor doing a pretty amazing job of having gas trucks escorted by highway patrol vehicles to get gas into as many cities as possible down the peninsula. They even opened up three ports — Port of Tampa being one — earlier than planned so they could get tankers into the state, then use those gas trucks to roll the gas up and down the state under escort to try to keep the lanes of evacuation traffic moving. On the ground, though, it was a real battle. Many of our interstate crossings, as you know, have huge numbers of gas stations set up to take, say, 20 or more cars and trucks at a time because even on a normal day, the interstates are so busy. But this was beyond anything those stations could handle. You’d pull off at, for example, Cordele, Georgia, only to find that just one out of five stations had any gas at all. And that station, normally able to take 10 or 20 cars, would have some 60 or more cars (by my count at one stop) trying to get in. I was really impressed at how well most drivers were handling this. We created all kinds of traffic patterns never heard of in normal times, just to get so many cars in and out as fast as possible while they swarmed a station (until it ran out). You’d see a line of cars heading for Pump 4, for instance, by driving carefully over some part of the station’s landscaping to reach that pump without cutting off two other pumps’ lines of cars. Highly improvisational, in other words, and completely not OK in normal times. But nobody even questioned such things. Everybody understood how serious it was to keep people moving out of the state, and then back in, as fast as possible, so all kinds of creative license was going on and very few angry outbursts that I could see. Just a lot of grim, pragmatic cooperation.
There has to be a good social-interaction study in all this, lol. As in Canetti’s famous “Crowds and Power” https://amzn.to/2y5HdbT — This was “crowds and emergency” and it was impressive to see the kind of fellow feeling that Vijaya is talking about in her comments, it really came out under the pressure of this thing. Your goal was first to get in, then to get out of the way of everybody else, and that was understood by the whole army of drivers because nobody wanted to be one of the drivers stranded on the side of a highway without gas. (There were emergency vehicles running cans of gas in and out as well as they could, but it could take hours for one to get to you if they could reach you at all. The rule of thumb was that by the time you’d used a quarter of a tank of gas, you needed to be finding the next fill-up, just to be safe.)
Wild times. Thanks for your note and concern, hope you’re well!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Wow–I never thought about the manatees or the gas situation. What an interesting study of human nature such an event affords. And you’re right, Viki, there is definitely an etiquette (that I think we’re still developing) about how we respond to death, disaster and tragedy on social media. I take my cue from what the family’s doing in the case of death; some invite tributes to the deceased on Facebook, some are more reserved and a private note or card is more appropriate.
I’m finding I need to be similarly sensitive about good news–one of my young relatives and her husband are conservative about what they share on social media, especially regarding their baby, while her sister and *her* husband merrily share every baby photo to their friends (but make the photos ungrabbable so I have to PM to ask for the good ones!) It seems to me that my children’s generation and those just a little older, the ones who’ve grown up with social media, are way better at managing these situations than my generation.
Hey Porter,
Glad to hear you made it through the storm.
Personally, I try not to demand anything of anyone I know is in that kind of situation – having been there myself (not a hurricane but earthquakes, forest fires) I know just what you’re talking about.
In the case of Irma, I was very anxious because I have many family members and friends who live in Florida. I was most concerned about my elderly mother who at first thought she’d weather the storm in her trailer in Fort Meyers. Luckily we were able to convince her to go to a shelter before things got hairy but I still worried like crazy. I pity my poor sister who took on the job of updater and she’s probably going to sleep for a week now that they are back home and have their power back (I hope so).
But my concerns and communications went only to my family and friends – people I know, (not acquaintances, etc.) and even at that I tried to keep to a minimum. Mostly I just stayed glued to the coverage and watched social media for my sister’s private messages or posts.
It’s hard when such a big event happens because even though everyone who isn’t in the incident directly – they are in it in a way because of friends, family, colleagues etc. or other connections. And it’s natural as human beings for us to want to reach out to people in our circles. But you make a very good point, your reaching out could distract them from dealing with everything and anything that may come their way during the crisis.
So noted.
Again, happy to see you got through the storm. And I’m happy to report that so did my family and friends with not too much heartache.