Here’s some good advice to prepare for a natural disaster: Get yourself a radio, preferably one that you can crank up by hand. I’m looking at a few on Google, and I see a some models that also come with a built-in flashlight and a port for charging your cellphone.
What brings this home is a story by Tony Elkins, a Poynter Institute faculty member who lives in Asheland, North Carolina, and who was stranded along with his wife and their dog after Hurricane Helene hit. He writes:
I spoke to Poynter’s Angela Fu about how important the radio was in getting out information. We had zero cell signal. No phone, no text, no data. In the mornings and afternoons, the radio was set to Blue Ridge Public Media for the 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Buncombe County update. That’s how we learned just how massive this event was.
In the evenings we tuned into 99.9 FM. The station hosts and iHeart support from around the country were running nonstop. People were calling in with updates, where to get supplies, reports on what was still standing and what was gone. People called in to beg for information on family or just hear another person’s voice.
It’s been a terrible week for the victims of Helene. While Donald Trump and his allies are spreading lies about hurricane assistance being diverted to undocumented immigrants, as Heather Cox Richardson writes, news organizations on the ground are doing their best to serve their community.
As Elkins observes, radio is a crucial lifeline given that it’s not dependent on internet or cellphone service. For people who have at least a little cell connectivity, some news organizations have put together text-only websites that will work even with slow and limited connections. Melody Kramer, a longtime journalist who’s interested in democracy and public participation, put together a short list of such outlets on Threads:
- Blue Ridge Public Radio: text.bpr.org
- Enlace Latino: text.enlacelatinonc.org
- WFDD 88.5: text.wfdd.org
- Asheville Watchdog: text.avlwatchdog.org
The dominant daily paper in the area, Gannett’s Asheville Citizen Times, has been using its Instagram feed to provide survivors with vital information. Elkins says that’s where he learned how to send SOS text messages and where to find nearby gas stations that were open. Reddit has been useful, too, he adds.
Hayley Milloy of LION (Local Independent Online News) Publishers wrote a newsletter item hailing LION members for the innovative approaches they were taking to keeping their communities connected and safe:
For example, Asheville Watchdog presciently looked at the elevated risk of flooding due to development in the days before the storm struck; Oviedo Community News published a local disaster resource guide; Enlace Latino NC devoted an entire editorial section to storm coverage; The Assembly is putting storm coverage outside its paywall and providing it free for any local or regional outlet to republish; The Charlotte Ledger launched Mountain Updates, a pop-up newsletter featuring important developments on flood recovery; and Carolina Public Press is raising awareness about misinformation around the disaster.
Sadly, one platform that had been a go-to for emergency news and information has become a don’t-go, according to Poynter’s Elkins. “I used to be a heavy Twitter user,” he writes. “When I finally opened X, it was full of horrible artificial intelligence-generated images and conspiracy theories. I’ll probably never go back.”
