Jim Cantore excels at injecting himself into weather stories. I’ve developed a complex relationship with hurricanes over my time in Texas, and he and I wound up staying in the same hotel once when I worked in Houston.
When a hurricane is approaching, one hotel often stays open for first responders and reporters. Jim Cantore and I stayed in that hotel for the arrival of Hurricane Ike in 2008. Several hurricanes hit the gulf coast that summer, but none had been strong enough to force a large number of evacuations.
When Hurricane Ike hit, station management sent me to Galveston Island to fend for myself. I had never experienced a hurricane before and suggested I stay in a bunker just across the channel on the mainland side. Emergency operations folk and media were hunkered down there because the island was evacuated.
But they were clear I was not to leave the island for any reason despite the evacuation order. The only bridge to the mainland was going to be shut down, after all, so if I left, I might not get back. This Reuters picture from after the storm shows crossing the channel may have been borderline difficult.
All the hotels in Galveston were closing, so I didn’t have a plan. Neither did management at the station [other than do NOT leave the island].
Eventually I stumbled into the last hotel that was open. But the clerk explained they were only giving rooms to first responders who’d have to start search and rescue missions and reporters who had already made plans. I called my boss who, in his defense, stayed on message: Do NOT leave the island [safety first].
From an email I wrote to an associate back in aught-eight:
He told me to hand the phone to [the clerk]. I said, “He wants to talk to you,” and mouthed, “I’m sorry.” She rolled her eyes while they were talking. After they got off, she said she could give me a room, but it’s on the 10th floor. Once the power goes out, I’ll have to use the stairs. But she said he was name-dropping how he knows [the owner of the hotel] and gave me a room to shut him up.
I felt bad; we’d known for several days the hurricane was coming and no one made plans. When the storm made landfall, I’d spend most of the time in the lobby with other reporters anyway. The fire department kept one door unbolted so TV reporters could take turns scurrying outside for stand-ups.
And that brings us to Jim Cantore.
Video of him getting blown around in Hurricane Ian has gained a lot of attention online. Couldn’t the tree blowing through the street have conveyed the message of damaging wind without having to knock him over?
He’s a friendly guy. He got along well with the police and firefighters who were guarding the door and, this is true, shut the door on him and held it closed when he tried to get back in. That brought a moment of levity for the rest of us, and Cantore laughed along with the first responders… once they let him back in.
Maybe us reporters should stop doing the exact thing we tell others not to do when we cover severe weather.
“We’re going to drive around outside so we can best illustrate why everyone should not be driving around outside,” we explain.
But I also got fired for doing that in Hurricane Harvey. That station in Houston has gone bankrupt and no longer has any reporters.
Maybe I should be taking a lesson from Jim Cantore on how to build a brand. My network job did have me take pictures of myself covering severe weather to send to trade magazines. I should start looking more harried and distressed instead of a staid, calming presence.
And maybe Galveston and Fort Myers, Florida will lead the campaign to stop giving hurricanes names that start with “I”.
