May 26, 2008 | 4:19 PM
Category:
News
I was watching TV before my Sunday night web producing
shift at FOX 9. The little bug in the corner of the screen told me
there was a tornado watch in most of the state -- telling me, Julie,
you better get to work now to put that weather alert on the front page
because people are gonna need to know what that means to them. Little
did I know just how important that simple weather alert story would be.
First, I wrote a story about the tornado watch. Okay, that's a little
serious, I thought, considering it's covering most of the state. But as
the minutes passed by and the weather alert evolved into... severe
thunderstorm WARNINGS and TORNADO WARNINGS... I knew I'd have a lot to keep up on.
Ian started to cut into Nascar coverage, and as we got the weather
alerts, Ian talked about them on air as I simultaneously put them
online. I knew once Ian got off-air, people would need the latest info
online to stay safe. When I heard Ian say, "There's a tornado touchdown
reported in Coon Rapids near Hwy. 10 and Main St" -- the dangerous
reality started setting in, as I realized that was an intersection that
I had driven past on thousands of occasions. A tornado? There? This was
serious -- something very deserving of cutting into Nascar for.
I put the Titan 3D radar on the front page of myfox9.com, so that when
Ian wasn't cutting in our viewers could see the red, orange and yellow
blazing over the Twin Cities online by clicking on the alert bar.
Photos started pouring in of golf ball and baseball-size hail and
overturned trees. Touchdowns were being reported and I saw the red and
orange sweep east across the north metro... heading over Forest Lake
towards Hugo.
Then dispatcher alerts (911 calls) starting coming in from Hugo, Minn.
They began saying things like, "multiple houses struck by tornado" and
"multiple entrapments and injuries" and "five city blocks demolished" -- at that point, my jaw dropped and I realize the grave magnitude of the situation.
Throughout the night, that little weather story that started out at
"Tornado Watch In Effect" ended up getting tens of thousands of page views since 4:00
p.m. and I was continually editing the story as the updated numbers
rolled in. Dozens of homes obliterated, missing, injured people, and
one child dead... a terrible natural disaster. I believe that lives
were saved because people happened to turn on the television or go
online when the skies turned gray.
The moral of the story... is that a day in the life of a news person is
never predictable. It was a holiday weekend, myself and everyone else
were prepared to have a low-key Sunday, and the simplest strong wind
and humid air evolved into a huge disaster. You never know what the
story will be when the first report comes in -- it just pays to be
prepared.
Julie Rose
Web Producer
