A few free-flowing thoughts on the ‘Flood of 2011’ Mark Guydish Commentary

RANDOM THOUGHTS dislodged by the flood …

• Remember when conservatives such as Lou Barletta, Pat Toomey and Tom Marino kept telling us the country is broke, that there’s just no money left, that there was no solution other than cutting spending? Remember how often they parroted the Republican Party mantra “Government’s not the solution, government’s the problem”?

Now they fall over each other promising the federal government will come to the aid of the area’s flood victims. Funny how having hundreds of registered voters standing knee-deep in muck with their belongings tossed to the curb or washed downstream can change political views.

I’m all for cutting the debt and have been since Ronald Reagan ran up his record deficits. But to be clear, we’re not broke. We’re still the richest country in the world. We decided to cut spending rather than raise taxes, which is fine by me if that’s the majority opinion. This is a democracy. But talking about cuts and watching the pain they inflict are two different things.

• How did it make sense to put in a water level gauge that maxed out at 38.5 feet when you have a levee designed to contain the Susquehanna River up to 41 feet? What conversation led to that decision?

“Well, poke a yardstick over the levee, and if the water hits your stick, you’ll know.”

• Which raises another point: High-tech gauges are great, but can’t we add a low-tech backup? Perhaps some hash marks on the bridge piers at the North Cross-Valley Expressway. We could paint the top one red at 41 feet and 1 inch, with a sign: “This is higher than the levee.”

• I realize all news media worked hard to keep people informed, and we all risked error as we rushed to give important information that could save lives or property, but things sometimes got a little loony on some local TV.

I watched one station where, in the span of maybe 20 minutes, one reporter advised viewers to trust only what they heard from that station or public officials, another reporter casually tossed out an unconfirmed report, a third reminded viewers the station always checked before it reported something and a fourth stood by the Luzerne County Courthouse and cited “sources” saying we might as well “write off” a bridge.

It behooves us as journalists trapped in a 24-hour news cycle to stop and take a breath. During such a crisis, dead air space can be less damaging than bad info.

• Speaking of rumors, I received one tip that “looters” had trashed the West Side Career and Technology Center – presumably evacuees taking advantage of their hosts.

Not true, Director Nancy Tkatch said with a laugh, though entertaining so many children did leave the library a bit disheveled as they pulled books and items out in haste. Tkatch praised the volunteers who helped at the shelter, and the evacuees who used it.

One co-worker at the newspaper jokingly suggested looters had intended to meet at Voitek’s appliances, but someone mistakenly thought they said “vo-tech.”

Actually, there’d be an upside to looters in libraries. It would suggest they want to improve their minds, rather than improve their TV viewing with a larger screen.

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