"It's Tough"

Mother Nature continues to rear her ugly head throughout the middle portion of the US today. This morning I was talking to my brother on the phone and he mentioned that storm sirens were wailing. Since he doesn't have a television, I went to the Weather Channel's website to try to determine if he was under a severe thunderstorm warning or a tornado warning. It was the latter!

The death toll continues to climb for the F-5 tornado that hit Joplin on Sunday as well as the tornado outbreaks of Monday and Tuesday. In Arkansas, the small town of Denning was, in large part, wiped off the map. Several tornadoes -- some of them rather large -- tore up the landscape yesterday in various parts of Oklahoma.

One of the many stories that really choked me up was of the mother in Piedmont, OK, who hid in a bathtub with her 3 young children as a tornado tore through her home. One child is missing. The youngest died from his injuries. A daughter and the mother herself were seriously injured. While the woman may well recover from her physical injuries, the emotional wounds most likely will stay with her the rest of her life.

Even some of the seasoned reporters have had trouble coping with the severity of the devastation. Shown below is Mike Bettes of the Weather Channel struggling with his emotions as he reports on the aftermath in Joplin.

I don't know about you, but this is one of the best reports of this nature I've seen in a while. Too often, reporters seem emotionally distant -- as if they are reporting on a bowl of fruit. They offer clinical descriptions as if no one's life have been impacted. They wax poetically about the tornado and storm itself without the slightest hint that it has altered lives in a meaningful way.

Mike Bettes gave this storm and its aftermath a human face.