The failure of local MSM to help me stay informed about the flood in Easthampton from this April nor'easter started at 9:30 yesterday morning....Carl, the guy who runs the Sunset Bakery downstairs from where I live on Cottage St, knocked on my door to tell me that water was backing up downstairs and that they were going to have to shut off the water in the whole building.
Great. Just peachy. Without water in our building, I decided the best course of action was to pack up and evacuate myself to my boyfriend's in Belchertown....where there was water. And things were a bit drier...
But we didn't hear much about Easthampton all day. In fact, there was barely a mention on Masslive.com or the local broadcast tv outlets WGGB, WWLP, or Channel 3. There seemed to be some information online in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, but that was all locked up safely behind a pay wall (as if they're the Wall Street Journal or something..)
The best report I got was from my friend Briana, who I called sometime in the early afternoon, who told me the Manhan River was starting to flood some of the houses on its banks (near Rt. 5), that the Oxbow in Northampton was flooded (no surprise there. a good normal spring rain can flood the Oxbow) and that she wasn't sure how she was going to get home. We figured the best way would be over Mt. Tom. Long, but not flooded.
Since I couldn't get any info about what was going on in Easthampton, I later drove from my appointment in Amherst to Easthampton by taking the Long Way through Holyoke and over Mt. Tom. While on the road, I tried various radio stations hoping to hear something, but you'd think nothing was going on--same old bland playlists and nothing-newscasts. Even our local NPR affiliate just kept on playing whatever it had queue'd up. Then again, NPR doesn't really have reporters it can send out to find out what's going on...so while I was a tad purturbed, I really couldn't blame them. It's just not their job...
That's kind of the job of the papers and the tv outlets. But no one had anything to say about Easthampton. Lots about Northampton and Westfield, where some folks were evacuated. But nothing about Easthampton, where a bunch of us had to "evacuate" also because there was no water in our buildings....
I got a smattering of news later that night. A couple of pictures on Channel 3 and that was it.
This morning, I got a call from my landlady, who told me that everybody up and down Cottage St. was flooded out, including Town Hall on Payson Ave....
The infrastructure's pretty old in Easthampton, and we're kind of low-lying, so these things happen....
The weather guys have been telling us that the water's going to recede today...but it's been raining all day....and will rain until at least Thursday. So it doesn't feel like the water's going away any time soon....
But the media should at least let us know more than just whether or not it's going to keep raining.
I guess it's easier to cover the VaTech story, hundreds of miles away and generating hundreds of wire stories, than it is to call up Easthampton's public works or fire chief and find out what's going on just a short hop from Northampton...
It's as if we don't exist....
So, while I've been something of a defender of local media--after all, where else can you hear all the high school sports you want and nary a bit of the pros--I have to say that I am sorely let down this time. The TV stations just keep yammering on about VA Tech, which is the same yammering I'm hearing all over the media--and isn't even bothering to give any flooding updates. I can't imagine why no one at Masslive.com (whose "bloggers" seem to be all over local media and in the colleges lately--some casting aspersions on who's a blogger and who isn't...) bothered to post about what's going on....and why the Gazette is keeping every scrap of info behind a pay-per-view wall, when it would be in the best interest of the community to at least make info about the flooding free for the moment...
I guess it's back to talking to the landlady, and talking to my friends. Because it's only by keeping my ears to the ground that I'm going to find out when my "evacuation" will be over....
Thanks for nothing, MSM....
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