Sunday, September 12

The Week That Nearly Washed Away


Hurricane Francis’ sloppy seconds made for a soggy mess locally as the Little Neshannock Creek became a murky, muddy river in much of Wilmington Township. Even members of the Amish community remarked they had never seen this kind of flooding from this small stream.

The flooding was more than just a few fields turning into lakes. The high water flooded homes forcing local volunteer firefighters to use boats to evacuated people. And Digital 88.9 News covered it all Live on the radio Thursday morning. We also had our crews for the The County Line out documenting it all on video.

The problem with a weekly television news magazine show is you don’t get on air for a week, so you lose that immediacy punch. But we’ll promote the video and then look back on how a small creek caused chaos on what would have been an ordinary Thursday morning.

This was also the week that Tandi Lane became the unofficial broadcast news goddess of Digital 88.9 News with her daily contributions in reporting or anchoring. On Wednesday she brought back a story from Slippery Rock on Senator John Kerry's stepson, Chris Heinz, campaigning to get college students to register to vote at Slippery Rock University.

In addition to filing a live report from SRU (where the Titan Radio signal does come in), she also filed a field report featuring interviews with Heinz. Her story was then picked up by the Pennsylvania Associated Press Broadcast Wire.