Reporting on disasters — especially disasters yet to occur — offers up endless possibilities for the mainstream media, which sometimes seem to like nothing better than considering the manifold catastrophes that might befall us.
This morning, online readers of the Chicago Tribune — already beset by a number of dire headlines from the main section of the Trib‘s home page (“Starved Rock fall kills boy,” “Cop kills driver in disputed shooting,” “Lizards being devoured by little ‘T-Rex'”) — were given yet one more link that seemed to warn of a dangerous world: “Busiest tornado month begins.”
We clicked, and were treated to a short post in which WGN-TV chief meteorologist Tom Skilling explained that May produces more tornadoes in the U.S. than any other month. “Cementing May’s twister supremacy, two recent Mays (2003 and 2004 each with more than 500 confirmed tornadoes) have blown all other months out of the water,” Skilling wrote. “So far this year, tornadoes have been reported at a near-record pace with a raw count of more than 600* on the books to date — making it one of the fastest-starting tornado seasons on record.” (Asterisk in original.)
But take a closer look at that asterisk: “Total may change by up to +/-30 percent as reports are evaluated.”
That means the true number of twisters the nation has theoretically seen so far this year might be, oh, anywhere between 422 and 784. In other words, no one has any idea how many rampaging tornadoes have hit America so far this year. Could be we’re staring a really bad year for tornadoes in the face — or not.
But most of us don’t live in Tornado Alley, so what is there for us to fear? A lot, if you can believe the alarmists at USA Today, who put Skilling and the Tribune to shame when it comes to whipping up fear and loathing.
“Is there anywhere safe to live?” the paper recently asked. Its answer: Clearly not.
“As images of devastation [from 2005] flashed onto TV screens, those far from the tempests may have felt some satisfaction that they had chosen homes in safe havens,” USA Today‘s Elizabeth Weise wrote. “But not so fast. From East to West, the USA is a patchwork of danger zones.”
Weise’s article went on to give readers everywhere a litany of reasons to be afraid, building up to a list of disasters each region might expect to face. New England must deal with nor’easters, it seems, while “the South gets pummeled by hurricanes with distressing frequency,” and the Great Plains is plagued with deadly blizzards and heat waves.
Weise ended with some worrisome possibilities even more imprecise than the Tribune‘s tornado stats.
“Salt Lake City,” she wrote, “is waiting for a magnitude-7 earthquake” (due in the next 300 years), while the entire West Coast “is at risk for the same kind of tsunamis that devastated Southeast Asia.”
Then came one final danger, a disaster which editors everywhere should clearly be prepared to cover:
“Last but not least, mountains up and down the coast are primed to erupt in the next 1,000 years, sending 30-foot rivers of volcanic mud racing down river valleys fast filling up with new subdivisions.”
Edward B. Colby was a writer at CJR Daily.