The National Weather Service has now confirmed ten tornadoes hit the area last Sunday night.

This has led to reporters from across the country showing up in the Preston Hollow neighborhood to shove a microphone into the face of people whose homes were damaged. In fact, that’s become a standard line to introduce myself.

“Hi, I’m Alan with KRLD,” I’ll say, gesturing toward my media ID. “You know, after these storms, all the reporters get shipped into neighborhoods to bother people who have more important things to do…”

Attention journalism students: That’s known as “breaking the ice.”

In fact, that’s been an incredibly useful tool to break the ice. People open up when, instead of clomping around on the rubble that used to be their home, you actually indicate you’re a human. Even other mammals can show compassion.

Clomping story for the journalism students: A few years back, I believe after the Granbury tornado, a TV reporter who no longer works in this market complained that one of her boots had gotten dirty. Her photographer lit into her for complaining about her boots in a neighborhood where people had just lost everything.

I vaguely recall a professor telling us to make friends with the TV photographers: they usually work in one city longer than reporters, so they actually know what’s going on. That’s the same professor who showed us raw tape from one of his career stops where a dingbat reporter thought, “How do you feel?” was a reasonable question for a woman who’d just found out her husband was on a plane that had crashed.

After ten years here, DFW has become home instead of just a stop in my career. Even now, though, I feel like I’d respond much differently than people who lost all their stuff.

“We’re all in this together!” people tell me.

“It’s just stuff,” another person said. “Anything can be fixed or replaced except people and pets.”

“Get outta here!” I’d tell a reporter like myself who wandered into my rubble. “I don’t feel like talkin’ to the media right now!”

I bring all this up because HEB and Central Market set up a mobile kitchen in Preston Hollow. They’ll serve breakfast, lunch and dinner through Saturday, giving me a captive audience for microphone shovin’.

And while I was there, HEB volunteers insisted I take some breakfast. “Refusing a biscuit would be disrespectful to the victims!” they said. Actually, they said [and I swear I’m not making this up], “Take one. Take one!”

Central Market volunteers demanded (DEMANDED) I take breakfast. I tried to decline. So many who need a hot meal more than me would come by, I reasoned. “Take one! TAKE ONE!” everyone in the kitchen yelled. There’s a lesson there, kids: sometimes, we all succumb to peer pressure. pic.twitter.com/egNFEo3krC

— Alan Scaia (@scaia) October 24, 2019

So I sat with folks who were having their first hot meal in several days. They told me they’ve got a long recovery ahead, but they’re just glad no one was hurt.

I then regaled them with my trip to the HEB in Corpus Christi before Hurricane Harvey, where a gentleman said the liquor aisle was the busiest place in the store. Everyone was about to be trapped inside with their kids for five days, he explained, so you’ve got to stock up on essentials.

And that was my contribution to this discussion.