We recently had a spate of bad tornadoes in Missouri. Of course, the floods have (rightfully) taken everyone’s attention since then, but for more than a week, it seemed like everything was about tornadoes.
It also seemed like everywhere I looked on Twitter, I saw a lot of irresponsible reactions to real emergencies.
Of course, it’s Twitter, so not everyone involved was a professional or should have known better. But too many were. Details from scanner traffic were being sensationalized and reported, information was given without context, people were sure a tornado was an EF-3, an EF-4 or an EF-5. Even though half of those making those assumptions didn’t know the proper way to refer to the EF system. Grotesquely, many emphasized how “historic” the tornado was before even caring about how people would fare.
Oak Grove, March 2017
Just two years ago, Oak Grove was hit by what turned out to be an EF-3 tornado, and I found myself balancing the considerations of being a journalist and being closely connected to the community affected. We had friends who lost their homes, saw friends shaken up, and were really only a few blocks from the tornado’s path. Thankfully, that night, the internet was quiet. Beside an image of a toppled apartment complex, no one was speculating about what hit Oak Grove.
People in Jefferson City and the KCK area didn’t have that last month. But when all was said and done, the Jefferson City tornado was determined to be about the same size. The KCK one was larger, but still (thankfully) lesser than what people online would have you believe.
I tweeted something about it in response to the tornado in Jeff City, typos and all.
So, I wanted to convey some things to know during after a disaster like a tornado, which can help you whether you’re a professional reporter or just someone who has information about a storm.
Stay calm. There is no need to cause people to panic. If the storm has passed, they’re out of danger. Inflicting panic is inflicting harm, and it also makes the job harder for those who need to tell the truth, and those who need to get people to act reasonably after a storm. Don’t scare people!
Stay home. Unless you’re a professional who knows how to go about observing immediate aftermath, don’t go out to drive around and see the damage until you know that emergency workers have cleared an area. You can impede their progress. After the Oak Grove tornado, there was something like a parade going through the streets of the city, looking for damage. Don’t be those people.
Don’t tweet scanner traffic. It isn’t always right. It creates a lot of rumors. Wait for it to be verified.
Mutual aide will be called for whenever there is that sort of damage. It isn’t a sign to panic. It’s just that the city needs more hands than what it had on staff at that moment.
You don’t know what the tornado rating is yet. Anything you say is speculation. Many hyped up the mile-wide nature of the KCK tornado, and assumed that meant it was an EF-5. It was an EF-4. A lot of people picked up on the label of “catastrophic” damage from the Jefferson City tornado, which is attributed to an EF-5. It was an EF-3.
Don’t tweet hyperbolic assumptions. If you state what you believe like news, people will think it’s true. Someone tweeted that the entire south side of Jefferson City was destroyed, and that tweet got a lot of traffic. It was obviously wrong.
Casualties doesn’t mean fatalities. It means injured or dead, and knock on wood, in the modern age, most of those numbers will be injuries. Passing along the word “casualties” can overstate the impact to those who don’t know the difference.