You’d have to be in a coma or living on a deserted island if you haven’t heard about the massive storm front impacting the East Coast of America today. there have been lot of news stories running all day about the event.
Sadly that’s all it is. We sometimes get excited about the biggest ever, or never before seen. Reality however, is that there are many, many storms around our planet every year. Some way worse than others. Some impact areas with few if any people. Just every so often one impacts a highly populated region, and we all become interested.
Today our media delivered a blow by blow description as events took place. flooding of low lying area’s and carparks, underground rail tunnels closed and full of water. Cranes, bent and twisted on high rise buildings. The list goes on and on. Something as mundane as a phone/camera photo of a city street flooded due to heavy rain became news. Even a bunch of poor hapless soldiers whose duty it is to guard the grave of unknown soldiers became news.
What struck me most was the description of images in headlines online. Dramatic, amazing, incredible, startling and the list goes on. Seems no superlative was too big for the images coming out of the states today.
Sadly, most where at best interesting, some good and a few excellent. Mostly they were just pictures of a storm passing by. If it wasn’t for the location, we would hardly have bothered to look twice.
Yes it was sad that people lost their lives, their property, pets and income sources. Some who perished would have been just plain unlucky. Wrong place wrong time. Others would have met their demise due to poor decision making on their behalf. Early victims of Sandy. Mostly from poor countries to the south of the mighty USA, hardly rate a mention. Although I understand 65 died in those area’s. Sorry you poor bastards, you’re not news worthy.
Then of course there are the unbelievable stories. A Tall Ship from another time sails right into the path of the bloody storm. I can’t wait to hear why somebody thought that would be a good idea.
Anyway enough rambling. some of my favorite pics from the day, edited by Alan Taylor from the In Focus Blog over at the Atlantic can be seen hear. As usual Alan has a keen eye for an interesting picture.