 |
| Chile's Calbuco volcano |
After dinner last night I had the first time in a few days to chill out and channel surf. There wasn't much going on so I swept through the news stations and lo and behold there was some far flung correspondent standing in front of what looked like a scene from Dante's Inferno.
Of course the nitwits at that "you report and we'll decide" fox-den didn't stop to put a label on the scene so we had to guess where the volcano was. In 5 minutes, they never said anything to identify it other than some small villages had to be evacuated. That was my first clue; that they used the term "villages" instead of towns. People elsewhere live in villages. Americans live in towns.
We were treated to a breathless account of "red hot lava", "debris falling like rain", yada yada but nothing more than "oh look see the pretty bird" type of information. Not knowing what was what, I figured it was on eastern Long Island so I could go to sleep in safety.
I woke up later and thought about that scene while watching a concert on YouTube through my trusty phone. I just typed in "volcano" and was greeted by page after page of videos of this mess; all angles, day, night, close, distant...you name it.
I wrote the suggestion box at Faux Noise this morning and opined that we could all learn more and see more, feel more, be enlightened more if during a breaking story you just put up a notice that said "breaking news, volcano, Chile, consult YouTube".