Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, July 6, 1993 TAG: 9307030092
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Kevin Kittredge
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
I remember my immediate reaction:
Not another tornado!
I could from the start envision the days and miles of work ahead - the short-tempered law enforcement officials, the tense insurance agents, the quotes I'd already heard at other times, in other places:
"It sounded just like a freight train."
Yes, yes, I know. . . .
The sad truth is, after too many stories, even disaster can seem boring.
Maybe especially disaster. Mayhem has no plot, no point. It happens at inconvenient times. The aftermath is tedious.
Worse, it all looks more or less the same.
This is one reason reporters become editors.
Another way to cope with this creeping inhumanity is to stop thinking in terms of numbers, of damage estimates and try to understand what things mean to people. One at a time.
The best way to understand this, of course, is to have it happen to you.
Which brings me to the storm.
You remember the storm. The one that came out of nowhere last month, knocking down trees, blowing out utility service and leaving us all wondering, as our headline aptly put it, "What was that?"
I didn't die. To my knowledge, nobody did, thank God.
But my life was changed for awhile.
The hurricane-force winds knocked a sycamore tree across my fence and yard. My telephone service went out. So did my electricity.
The latter, I discovered, was no small thing.
For four days, I couldn't take a shower at my home. I couldn't wash my hands. I couldn't brush my teeth. I couldn't cook - just as well, since the food in the refrigerator had gone bad.
I hauled water from a nearby creek to flush the toilet. I bought bottled water to drink. Meals meant a drive to town.
Nights were hardest. When the sun went down it was really dark. A trip to the bathroom required a flashlight.
The first night was OK. It was sort of like camping out.
The second night wasn't.
The third night took the remaining pittance of my patience.
I spent the fourth night in a hotel.
I'd have made a rotten pioneer.
I would hate to do here what reporters are always being accused of doing: blow things out of proportion.
Losing utility service was an inconvenience, not a disaster.
My house, after all, was unhurt, my landlady responded immediately, my neighbors reached out with hands and chain saws to help remove the fallen tree. In the end, it was just a story to tell.
But I'm trying to think of it as an education, too. It's easy - if dull - to report the number of people without electricity, or the property damage totals, easy to forget the complicated lives that breathe beneath the numbers.
People are always involved.
People like me.
The next time - if there has to be one - a tornado hits on my beat, I'm going to remember that tragedy is in the details. To ask myself, as I should have been asking myself all along, what my life would be like if it had happened to me.
And, between interviews, to recite the John Donne line like a mantra:
"Never send to know for whom the bell tolls: It tolls for thee."
Kevin Kittredge is the New River Valley bureau's general-assignment reporter.
by CNB