By Mary Beth Garber
Sunday morning brought 80 mile an hour winds and the acrid smell of burning brush. We looked out the window to see a reddish, hazy ball that should have been the sun, rising in the dark, blackening sky. A wild fire was on the move nearby.
So we did what people do when their normal world is threatened – we turned to our local media for information and the sound of a friendly comforting voice. Our radio brought us calm but concerned voices. We heard the voices of professional announcers and reporters, overwhelmed neighbors, fire, police and local officials.
Like most people, I knew where to turn for information and we had a pretty good range of stations from which to choose. And all of them kept feeding us the information our family and our neighbors needed to keep ahead of the flames and up on the evacuation routes.
We moved downstairs and I flipped on the television and pulled up the Internet,
At 6:30 in the morning only one TV station had any coverage at all of the fires. The rest still carried their regularly scheduled programs. It took hours for all of the local TV stations to begin covering what by then was a raging inferno that had driven thousands of our neighbors into flight and had burned into the heart of our community.
In comparison, the local radio station websites were full of pictures submitted by listeners or captured by reporters. Eventually the local TV stations and their websites caught up. But radio was there when we needed it most. When we needed to know what was happening now. When we were gathering photos, papers and the dog preparing to evacuate. And when no one knew for sure which way the changing winds would push the fire through the Malibu hills.
The days ahead would bring Federal Disaster level destruction to the Southland, but our radio stations never left our sides. All of them, no matter their format focus, reached out across the state to their local communities, to their terrified, distraught and exhausted neighbors.
We lost our TV cable later that day, and most of our neighbors’ Internet access went with it. By afternoon our cell coverage was also gone.
For some reason our Internet connection was spared. And soon neighbors were stopping by to let friends and family know they were okay. We kept the radio station streaming while people worked their emails, and all of us continued to listen. Sharing the sadness when the announcer confirmed that the local church and community gathering place had burned to the ground. Cheering when they announced the city’s animal clinic, which had earlier been declared lost, turned out to be standing. And just feeling comforted by being connected to one another through those familiar voices that usually told us how long it would take to get to Santa Monica along PCH.
Even after the TV stations returned to their primetime and sports programs, our radio stations stayed with us as the winds died down and smoke began to lift.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget how much we mean to the people we serve. How much we can do to make our listeners’ lives a little more….human. How we help make us all a little more connected to one another. Whether it’s publicizing local events during normal times or coordinating donations in times of need, we have the unique ability to be there for our neighbors.
During the next several weeks we will laud the extraordinary bravery of the firefighters, and tell stories of ordinary people who became heroes. But let’s not forget to also take pride in our own heroes. Those men and women whose reassuring voices kept us informed, kept us calm and reminded us that at the end of the day…with a little luck we’d be back stuck in traffic on PCH. And we’d be happy to be there.
Nice job, everyone. Thank you.
