As summer draws to a close, a co-worker is checking things off her Summer of 2021 to do list. After vising 18 Nebraska Passport sites this past weekend, she has only 9 more to go to reach her goal of visiting all the sites on this year’s list. But those nine sites will have to wait at least a week, for this week she has reservations for a hot-air baloon ride.

In my student days, I read a Life magazine story about a hurricane which struck the United States and added experiencing a hurricane to my list of things I wanted to do. I had seen floods, tornadoes, hail storms, blizzards and fires. Earthquakes didn’t interest me, but I thought it would be great fun to experience the driving rain of a hurricane.

Fast forward a few years and a friend had married a tug boat captain and was living on the Florida gulf coast. I remember her telling about her first hurricane. Husband Paul was on board ship and Wife Pam was home alone. The wind blew and the rain poured down but then it became quiet. She decided hurricanes weren’t so bad and she went out for a walk. Long term residents stopped her and advised she should rush home. The storm wasn’t over, they were just in the eye of the storm and soon rain and wind would return.

A later hurricane left their home unsuitable for habitation. Rather than pay the high post-hurricane cost for the needed repair materials, they lived for months, perhaps years in a camper while waiting for the post-hurricane prices to come down.

When I learned Hurricane Ida was churning through the Gulf and headed for the United States, I thought they were safe in Canada.

I was only half right. Though the hurricane missed their current home on the east coast of Florida. Pam was at their home in Canada, Paul had returned to work and was on board a supply ship near New Orleans. Their airplane was parked in a hangar at Houma and in the path of the storm.

It was a wild day for them, as the eye of the hurricane passed right over Paul’s ship that was tied up in Port Fourchon.

Thanks to modern communications, Paul and Pam were able to talk with one another throughout the storm. Though a nearby hangar was destroyed, their plane made it through the storm without damage.

I would like to see pictures Paul may have taken of the storm, however, his employer does not permit the sharing of photos.

Instead I’ll have to settle for the Weather Channel’s pictures of Jim Cantori being assaulted by the hurricane.

I once turned down an opportunity to stand in for Cantori on national television. A major winter storm was expected to cross to the north of us and Cantori had gone to Sioux City. Instead, the storm took a southern track leaving the Weather Channel unprepared. I was asked go outside, stand in the storm and report on what it was like in Superior. I did agree to send video I shot while looking out an open door, but I refused to go out into the storm. It was press day and some staff members had not made it in to work that day.

This week Editor and Publisher magazine distributed a story prepared by the Poynter Institute which explains why the national television networks put people like Cantori in storm’s way. The following is a condensed version of that report.

As one of the most powerful storms to ever hit the U.S. the Weather Channel was broadcasting pictures of Jim Cantore standing in the storm. You know Cantore. He’s the meteorologist with a cult-like following for going, literally, into the storm. There’s a joke that really isn’t funny: If there’s nasty weather out there, the last person you want to see in your town is Jim Cantore.

And there he was on Sunday.

Wearing a baseball helmet (not a hat, a helmet) and rain gear, Cantore stood on Canal Street in New Orleans, shouldering against a driving rain and wind gusts of more than 80 mph. Toppled and mangled garbage dumpsters were strewn around him. Shouting into a microphone, Cantore tried to describe the devastating power of the Category 4 hurricane. He looked like he might get blown down the alley at any second. There were few more haunting images than that of Cantore standing on a pitch-black street in downtown New Orleans on Sunday night as power was out everywhere around him.

In some ways, you might look at Cantore’s coverage as reckless. But it’s something that all hurricane reporters replicate. The scenes are meant to show the powerful impacts of the storm. They can be effective, but can also be distracting. There are times when it feels gratuitous. Take, for instance, NBC News weather guy Al Roker, who started Sunday morning’s “Meet the Press” with a live update from New Orleans. Roker was standing in a spot where he was hit by waves crashing over a sea wall. The camera showed Roker could easily have taken a few steps to his left and been clear of the waves. But where’s the drama in that, eh?

“I cannot provide any good excuse for standing so close to the coast that you let waves hit you,” said Al Tompkins. Tompkins has been a reporter, photojournalist, news producer and news director. He now teaches multimedia storytelling for Poynter.

“There is some value to the viewer to be able to see the intensity of a storm,” Tompkins said. “It can serve as a proxy for viewers who might have evacuated and want an eyewitness account of what they left behind. If you were locked in a shelter, you would be anxious to know what was happening outside.”

Sunday’s TV news coverage of Hurricane Ida was impressive. Scenes from the storm were horrifying and heartbreaking.

The networks and cable news stations had various reporters in various locations filing, essentially, the same reports: stand outside, get pummeled by a major hurricane, scream into a microphone and tell the viewers how bad it is.

It has become increasingly cliched, but as a dangerous storm is passing over, this is usually all reporters can do. They can’t really drive around to different locations because it is simply too dangerous. They are limited in movement and that limits their reporting. All they can do is pick a spot and tell viewers what is going on where they are standing.

I’m thankful we have journalists who are willing to walk around for days in wet socks while snarky bystanders shout ‘fake news’ at them.”

While we didn’t have a hurricane to cover in Superior, The Express staff did cover a motor home fire on Saturday night.

While our coverage is not as good as we would have liked, hopefully it will give readers some feel for the danger associated with such a fire. The picture printed in full color on our website will give more detail than does the black and white printed in this newspaper.

Rita and I reached the fire scene before the fire department. Not wanting to get in the way of the emergency responders and fearing for our safety we observed the fire from the airport. In such a fire, things like inflated tires, propane and gasoline tanks can explode. Items stored inside the motor home can become flying missiles when heated by the fire.

As we left town, we could see the flames shooting into the air. We reached the fire scene after the climax.

Had we planned for the fire, there are things we could have done which would have improved our photo coverage but all things considered, we think we did the best we could under the conditions we had to work with.