As of August 30, Hurricane Irene had claimed 43 lives. No number of deaths should be taken lightly. When a lump-sum such as this is is reiterated in news broadcasts in such a way as to seem almost a mere term with no substantial meaning, it is necessary to employ cause-and-effect reasoning in order to obtain the true degree of concern for this matter.
“In general, most East Coast communities took Irene very seriously and started taking measures early…millions of people were told with plenty of time to spare to get out of Irene’s path,” OurAmazingPlanet’s Mike Wall wrote in his August 29 article.
Why, then, did a New York man, age 53, boat to his drowning death on the strong rapids of the Croton River on August 28? Why did a Pennsylvania man stay out in the open in a tent and die from a falling tree? The same questionable manner is applicable to the case of 55 year-old New Jersey-native James Palmer, who drowned in the rough shallows of Flagler Beach, Florida.
Yes, there are always those who feel impenetrable to Mother Nature no matter what, but could it be that the media hype caused the general population to disregard the threat as hype itself?
“Irene’s mammoth size made many forecasters nervous, as the storm had potential to pummel huge swaths of the Eastern Seaboard with heavy rain, flooding and strong winds. At its largest, Irene measured about 600 miles across, nearly as big as Texas,” Wall said.
Speaking from personal experience, the Fox coverage I was exposed to while visiting family (who had control of the remote, and thus my initial news sources) left me feeling confused. The August 23, 5.8 magnitude earthquake was over-reported to the exclusion of Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi coverage. Just days later, Hurricane Irene was reported as a 150 mph, flesh-eating natural disaster while I was reassured that there was no risk of a post-quake tsunami by a tiny flashing bar across the bottom of the screen. Clearly, this illustrates the media’s tendency to over-exaggerate when presented with news of a natural disaster.
To those who are now thinking that all 43 of the fallen tree, downed wire, floodwater, power outage and car-related deaths could be picked apart in order to come to the conclusion that the human who died is at fault, I believe the fallen deserve little sympathy. ‘What?’ one might ask, ‘is this not a rant meant to publicize the over exaggeration of a tropical storm?’, to which I answer, ‘it is the opposite.’
While the United States is focused on tasks such as certifying the August 28 death of a Bellport Bay (NY) windsurfer as Irene-related in order to add it to the intensifying victim list, I think of August 29 as the 6 year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which killed more than 1,800 people.
Written by Kate Grandchamp, Copy Editor
