Kelly Lange

I watched the Mike Morgan WeatherBrains episode, and while there was a lot of vitrol thrown out last night I believe those people are simply looking for a reason to hate on both Mike Morgan and KFOR.  IMHO it was a pretty strong defense of the whole body of work KFOR did that day especially within the context within which 5/31 happened. The advice Morgan gave was wrong to broadcast, I don’t think there’s any arguing that, he even seemed pretty sure it was the wrong thing to say in discussing how to word such situations. However, the body of work the OKC media (including) KFOR has done is impressive considering.

When you are on air for so much time, it really is hard for anyone not to say something dumb at some point. How many times have people on other stations both in OKC and around the country given similarly bad advice? It’s happened many times, as a guy who’s lived here and watched the OKC stations (or listened to as a chaser) my whole life, I’ve heard dumb things said by everyone up and down the ladder. When you are on-air for so long, that tends to happen from time to time.

The bigger issue that no one wants to talk about (or hasn’t yet) is how so many in OKC had no actionable tornado safety plan and instead resorted to panic when things got hairy. I’m a firm believer most of those who fled on 5/31 had made up their minds (whether they know it or not) before the first tornadoes even touched down that day. Morgan had some role in it, but he certainly wasn’t the leading factor.

I think 5/20 and the stories and quotes from engineers, residents and city leaders about how people left their homes and likely survived because of it did as much damage as anything said on air did as far as traffic goes. It is certainly hard to want to stay in your home with no adequate shelter when you are hearing violent tornadoes are possible and the images of flattened neighborhoods are fresh in your mind.

Compound that with people who had no idea what to do with that information, and you got 5/31 and the traffic heading south. While I feel Morgan does deserve a small portion of the blame, the majority of the blame rests on everyone who drove south who should have known better. It’s weak to blame others for you taking the wrong action. Personal responsibility is what saves your life when tornadoes threaten, period.

I was initially very angry at the traffic and tried to blame Morgan indirectly a few times, then I realized I got what was coming to me chasing in the OKC metro and that it was more of a product of the situation at hand. I shouldn’t have chose to be there chasing as much as people on the roads shouldn’t have either. I knew better, I was wrong to ever criticize KFOR directly for the events of 5/31 either publicly or privately.

What I’d really like to come out of this is the need for a few things.

1)People need to have an actionable tornado safety plan in tornado prone areas, period. The hard truth is, those who tend to die in tornadoes are those who simply don’t have a plan. Weather information disseminators should take note of this, it’s that important to stress. 

2)Communities and neighborhoods should have better communication in order to get shelters built in areas which need them and have a better way to allocate resources so people who need a safe place don’t have to drive a measure of miles to get to that safe place. Again, tornado safety starts with people taking personal responsibility for their families’ safety.

3)Along those lines the drive south message is great in theory, the safest place to be in a tornado is not where the tornado is after all, but it’s inherently flawed because people are typically not weather savvy and aren’t prepared to deal with changing weather conditions. There needs to be more emphasis on better shelter in place action plans which involve shelters or safe rooms for everyone possible. The ‘flee’ message has to do just that from weather messaging.

4)Finally a better way to message big days like 5/31 or 5/20 or 5/19 or 5/15 in DFW. Morgan’s defense that KFOR told people to be where they feel safe by 3:45pm would have saved a lot of lives had people actually followed that. Being within a walk of a safe place before storms begin is the best actionable course.

It’s not just news media, storm chasers and other weather personalities who people follow HAVE to remember that wording matters. You can’t induce a panic — talking about potential tornado outbreaks days in advance in a public forum for public consumption is incredibly irresponsible since conditions leading to such events are hard to pin down even the day of sometimes. Wording such as ‘big severe weather event possible’ is a more cautious but informative way to get the message across.

On the day of, you have to stress the need to have a tornado safety plan and ideally give people timing they need to be ready. We’re reasonably good enough we can do that sort of thing now. Tornado safety precautions should be stressed through the day leading up to an event even as much as they are during the event. A prepard public is a knowledgeable public and oftentimes when you are naming streets its too late for many.

If you don’t get this need for better messaging and don’t get why responsible messaging is more important than hype messaging, no matter how much you know about weather, you don’t know enough about messaging and you shouldn’t be disseminating weather information period.