It was a regular Friday for me. Technical direct the noon news, have some lunch, then start on my projects for the day. This particular day, they had me terminating some ethernet cables. Around 1:30 they came and got me because we were going to do a cut-in to let people know the bad stuff was on the way. That only lasted a few minutes. After that, I considered all the rest of my jobs on hold. I was needed in the control room until my relief showed up. Things could happen at a moment's notice and we needed to be ready to go on. Well, around 2:45, we did...and we didn't stop til 7:30.
After my relief arrived, I was kind of in limbo. But that didn't last long. Tim Hedrick, Michelle Boutillette and Scott Dimmich were all in to work on this storm. They had a special camera set up in the weather center. And they were trying to use their new technology, an app on the iPad. Unfortunately, for some reason, the iPad kept going to sleep. I was called in to try to fix the problem. If you were watching and heard Tim say on the air "I need an engineer to fix this," that was me. I thought I had solved it, but all I did was delay the sleep. So for the better part of 3 and a half hours, I stood in the studio and kept the iPad awake, and handed it to them when they needed it.
As a result, I learned a lot more about the weather than I would have if I had been doing anything else. The pattern was long, but really was made up of smaller, cellular shapes. This worried Michelle. She said any time weather patterns are shaped like that, there's always the potential for cyclonic flow, causing a tornado. And she was right. As the day wore on, we began to get reports of tornado touchdowns, destruction of major portions of some small towns, and sadly, the loss of a few lives.
We got reports in from the field. Dan Spehler was in Piner, Kentucky at a truck stop. At this point, I believe this is where we saw the greatest loss of life. Rich Jaffe was new Moscow, Ohio, where he said many buildings were leveled, and trees looked as if they had been clear-cut by a logging company. Deb Dixon was in Holton, Indiana, the first place we heard about of an actual tornado touching down. As afternoon became evening, and the reports of damage and loss of life came in, I could see it begin to wear on the weather team. Every confirmed death made them sink a little lower in their chairs. But they soldiered on, because information needed to be given. People in the Eastern sections of the viewing area were still being affected. It was a fantastic job by all involved to get this information in. As the meteorologists reported on the air, every reporter and producer in the newsroom was taking calls and e-mails about what was happening. The camera people kept everything on the studio floor calm and manageable, and the control room had all the pieces of the puzzle ready to put on the air. It was total team effort.
Before all of this started, I had planned to go out with my friends for my birthday. Unfortunately my fiance is out of town. She's running a half marathon in New Orleans tomorrow. God bless her, I get tired after running more than 2 miles. So the plan was to get some fish for dinner, then it was up to me what I wanted to do. Well it had been far too long since I had been laser-tagging, so that's what we did. We grabbed some dinner at Morgan's Roadhouse on Pedretti, then it was off to Scallywag tag. Our start time was set for about 15 after we got there, so we played some arcade games to pass the time. Somehow, I got the high score in skeeball, pop-a-shot, and won air hockey. Knowing my friends, I doubt that they were letting me win, so I must have been on some kind of roll. My laser-tagging wasn't so good. But there were apparently some kids there who spent an inordinate amount of time there. After we finished our 2 games, we headed over to BW-3's for some post-tagging merry-making.
It was sad though, to think that while I was celebrating my birthday, some people were going to be forced to sleep on a cot in a community center that night. That for the next few weeks, they would be have to go back to their once lovely homes, and dig through the rubble for prized possessions and hope to find some of them undamaged. It's a tragic event that reminds us all just how quickly life can change. I'm thankful that my house was not anywhere near the most severe storms, and that all of my friends and family were safe, but it always tugs at me a little when I hear of these small towns, who didn't get enough warning, and they lose everything. It's a shame that the awesome force of nature could give me a good night, after giving the people affected by the storms, such a horrible day.
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