In Hindsight, We Are Thankful For The Planning And Foresight

In Hindsight, We Are Thankful For The Planning And Foresight
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OCEAN CITY- Journalists get desensitized sometimes and can often be criticized by their own family members for acting like cynical skeptics and curmudgeons.

If you work long enough in this business, at some point, you will have an editor in some market (usually the larger ones) walk up to your desk and say with a straight face, “go find me death and destruction by deadline today.” Granted, this doesn’t happen here at this publication, but it does happen, and those very words have been uttered to this reporter for no reason other than it was a slow news day in the city.

Here in our region, some of the biggest news events are storm related, and upon the threat of a major storm coming up our coastline, you pull your rain slicker and your ‘hurricane galoshes’ out from the garage or the basement and you get ready for long days and nights of frenzied reporting, meteorological guesstimating, and coastal flooding.

Yet, in conducting the interviews before and after many of the storms that have hit (or just missed) our region over the years, we’ve noticed a strong similarity between the general skepticism about looming storms from locals and those aforementioned cynical journalists.

Simply put, locals have a hard time believing, just like journalists do.

In most cases, that skepticism is completely warranted as many storms that have been dubbed “the hurricane of the century” by overzealous weather-folks have turned out to be nothing more than tropical breezes (um…Hurricane Earl, anyone?)

However, this reporter will never forget the scenes in and around Ocean City in the days leading up to Superstorm Sandy, which ended up sparing us by the smallest of margins and instead decimated parts of New York and New Jersey to the north and walloping Crisfield further south in 2012.

It was like a scene from Aesop’s fable “The Ant and the Grasshopper” as many locals chose to party at local watering holes rather than board up their properties for the storm that was churning up the coastline. The response from many of the “grasshoppers” interviewed was that they just ‘didn’t believe that it was going to be a bad storm, and that we would be fine in Ocean City like we always are.’

While Sandy was a big wake up call for a lot of people in our region, it didn’t make believers out of everyone. The scientific data that shows that storms are getting bigger, stronger, and more prevalent threaten our pristine and otherwise easy-going coastal lifestyle.

Some folks call that data ‘fact’ and others call that data ‘hype’, and perhaps those who continue to call it ‘hype’ call it that because believing it would be too much of a burden to bear about the realities that data might promise if a major storm were to actually hit our beloved region.

Simply put, is denying that data merely a defense mechanism similar to the defense mechanisms journalists often have to employ to get through covering traumatic and horrific news stories?

Juxtaposed, however, with the perceived skepticism about intense storms from some locals is the comprehensive and committed preparation that the city has set in place over the past 40 years.  The council’s foresight in the 1970’s to set a limit on how far to the east buildings could be built on the oceanfront has proven to be 20/20 and completely spot-on in hindsight.  As was the controversial move to fortify our beach and dune system with the beach replenishment program, which has been credited with saving over a billion dollars worth of property since its inception.

These protective and natural levies have helped preserve our way of life, and allow our skepticism about storms and their potential impact on our lives to continue, and in all honesty, we would take skepticism over devastation any day.

During our interview with City Engineer Terry McGean this week, this reporter joked to McGean afterwards that we’ve seemingly done slightly different versions of the same interview on an almost annual basis in the past five or six years.

We had a laugh when I likened his answers to locker room interviews that I used to conduct with professional athletes.

The athletes, much like McGean in this situation, had stock answers about carrying out game plans, having all the team members give a 110 percent and the importance of a little bit of luck while sticking to those game plans throughout the dramatic event.

Perhaps it’s the only time that McGean has or will ever be compared to an NBA or NHL player, but this comparison is not a knock on the City Engineer by any means.  Moreover, it highlights the importance of having a plan, and being vigilant at all costs to do the things that you need to do to carry out that plan.  Sometimes, the plan is the plan, and there is little else that needs to be said, especially if it works.

Our city workers are much like the star power forwards of our team during weather events, logging long and grueling hours and overcoming great adversity to ensure that victory is achieved, even if that victory is merely just obverting disaster or moving large mounds of sand back in place.

The city stuck to the plan, the players (including the dunes) all did their job, and we got a little lucky. Now journalists and locals can get back to their regularly scheduled pastimes of being skeptical about the weather forecast and blissfully cynical about many other things too from politics to pro sports.

That sounds like normalcy to us and getting back to normal as quickly as possible, especially after a big storm, is a total win for everyone.