Tweeting the Twister

Last night a massive storm front slammed through Southern Ontario dropping a half dozen tornadoes all around, as well as in, the town where I live. This morning, the city of Vaughn and the town of Durham are still under declared states of emergency as they cope with considerable damage. Fortunately, there is only one confirmed death so far, an eleven year old boy who was camping with his mom, but many people are still missing.

The storms came in a wishbone shaped double wave with the first front hitting just before 6:00 pm. I was working at the computer, suddenly aware that the outside light had virtually disappeared. I looked up to see a black sky turn green with two funnel clouds forming to the North and West. This is far from Tornado alley, but any idiot could have realized what was happening.

Unfortunately, a special breed of idiots remains in charge of local Canadian television, for the station I had on in the office hadn’t even issued a storm warning.

I sprinted out to herd in the livestock, realizing we might be in serious trouble when I found my sheepdog already sitting completely still dead center of the house. The cat shot in from the deck and despite hating the dog even more than she hates me, took up a position right under the pooch.

The local radio station that was on in the kitchen was spitting out storm warnings as fast as it could, also letting me know that Durham had been hit hard. I sealed the windows against the monsoon as massive lightning strikes that looked like a map of the circulatory system began hitting about every five seconds.

Since the lightning was now crackling the radio so much it was unlistenable and local television was in news hour mode, I went back to the TV to find out what was happening.

I learned that the Lockerbie bomber had been released, the Prime Minister was enjoying his trip through the Arctic and Hurricane Bill was threatening Bermuda. Nothing about what was happening right outside my window and less than 30 clicks from where these broadcasts were originating.

To be sure, there had been a mention of Durham, where the first Tornado had hit an hour earlier and that there were “suspected” touch downs of funnel clouds in Vaughn and my hometown of Newmarket. But no details. No raw video from a courageous videographer. No field reporters ducking flying cows.

In the centralized model of Canadian local TV I’d predicted months ago but never thought might ever personally affect me, the two million people who live just beyond the Greater Toronto Area had no television service addressing the imminent threat they all faced.

Instead, I was treated to the same pre-packaged news segments, the same smiling meat puppets and the same banal “Sparky, what the heck’s happened to my Blue Jays?” banter.

By now, the weather site on my computer was giving me moving satellite maps and Doppler radar showing the second, much larger wall of storms approaching fast and a couple of my friends were Tweeting blocked roads and that the Twister in Newmarket had hit a children’s riding competition at the Canadian Equestrian Centre.

I started longing for the platoons of bubblehead blondes who appear on every LA street corner after an earthquake tremor, clutching their microphones and bug-eyed with intensity.

Can you imagine that many hot buttons (Tornado, kids in jeopardy, terrified ponies) being pushed in a market that actually tries to cover local news?

I kid – but consider for a moment that you are monitoring police bands in a Canadian TV newsroom and hear that a Tornado has hit a horse farm where hundreds of kids are participating in a riding competition. Wouldn’t that strike you as somewhat important, that maybe those hundreds of kids had parents who might want to know their children were in need of assistance?

But nobody reported any of that information even as the hyper-animated ass clown who does local weather on CTV finally started to show the Doppler I’d been getting online for an hour. You almost felt sorry for the poor schmuck. It was obvious that he was starting to grasp the enormity of what was happening and that hundreds of thousands of people within the sound of his voice were quite possibly in grave danger. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t shake his “Hippy-Dippy” on-air persona and be real for a change.

By the time the newscast ended, the streets around my home were fast-flowing, axle-deep rivers. A three foot thick tree down the block had been snapped in half and roofing material was skittering past everywhere.

I got Tweets saying every ambulance and fire truck in town was headed to the Equestrian Centre, that trees were blocking streets and barns had imploded. But my local news stations had all gone back to regular programming.

Try to get your heads around that…

SIX WEEKS AGO WE GAVE THESE SAME NETWORKS $150 MILLION TAX DOLLARS TO SAVE LOCAL PROGRAMMING AND IN A CRISIS IMPACTING MILLIONS THEY WENT BACK TO REGULAR PROGRAMMING.

If it had been up to them, these guys would have held off coverage of 9/11 until “Regis and Kelly” was over.

So I started Tweeting, in the hope that somebody following might get information they could use:

Sorry, lost it a little there and went for the Fox News version of news coverage.

Once the rain let up a little, I piled in the car to see if I could help at the Equestrian Centre as well as check on a friend who lives right next door to it. Power was out everywhere, trees snapped in half, debris all over the place. It looked like the twister had scored a direct hit on the show ring. It was gone. Horse trailers were shattered, over-turned and tossed into ditches. Barn roofs and doors had been torn away.

Cars lined both sides of the road, locals like me who’d come to lend a hand. OPP and York Region Cops were comforting terrified pre-teen girls in Jodphurs and riding boots as nearby farmers filled arriving horse trailers with dozens of skittish horses. A paramedic nearby was assuring a distraught woman that nobody had been seriously hurt as a cop let people know they could go back home.

“Nothing more you can do here.”

But there is something more I can do.

I can ask where the hell that $150 Million went.

I can demand to know why the people who are supposed to bring me local news are completely incapable of doing that.

I can try to discover why a part of the country with the largest concentration of media we’ve ever known didn’t get the journalism they pay for or even received the most basic level of service.

I’m sure CTV and Global will plead poverty and whine that they no longer have the staff to support their mandate and also need to rely on the Ad revenue from celebrity gossip to stay afloat in these “tough economic times”. Hell, they’ll probably use this tragedy to ask for EVEN MORE money from tax payers.

So, let’s be honest with ourselves. The people who run broadcasting in this country care more about Ricky Martin’s babies than yours and have more time for cell phone footage of Brad Pitt asleep than any programming Canadians might create.

We could write our MPs or complain to the CRTC. But it’s clear they’re not going to do anything.

At the most the CRTC will hold more secret meetings while denying that they even knew there were meetings.

The Greed and incompetence in our industry and the unwillingness of our elected representatives to act has reached a point where our television industry is no longer relevant to anyone.

Local TV is officially dead in Canada and it went not with a bang but a Twitter.