UMass Amherst: After the Storm

The fact that this story was very difficult to produce just reinforced the severity of the storm that swept the east coast. Millions went without power and downed trees and power lines made the roads seriously unsafe. It was the storm that set records, as the fact that it was a rare October snow and the damage it did was unbelievable. Halloween was cancelled across the east coast, several people died in the aftermath, including a man in Springfield who touched a guardrail which still had a power line on it.




The main problem my group encountered was a serious lack of communication. All of our cell phone services were down, internet was down and power was down. In other words, it was difficult. There's something to be learned about how much people rely on electricity. It's unbelievable how far we've come, yet how ignorant we've become when people don't know how to survive without electricity.

As if we didn't have enough trouble, I managed to meet up with one of my partners, and we got some great interviews, including one with the assistant fire chief. Unfortunately we had technical difficulties, and forgot to plug in a crucial tool. So those interviews were down the drain. Two lessons were learned, always make sure everything is plugged in and always remember to carry around a tripod. Even if the interviews were good, the camera was a bit shaky.

We managed to fix all of out mistakes and produce this video, and I think it turned out pretty well. It gives some good insight. Chances are, majority of the staff and student body thought having class was a bad idea. I was one of them. I had it well, but there was still people in danger of death if they were forced to come to campus. Not good.

I'll leave this with one last note. UMass Amherst has a Facebook page. It blew up with comments from students about how much they hated the decision. Whoever is in charge of the page told everyone to relax. Bad idea. When you have an entire student body against you, you don't say something that's just going to anger them more. That's just bad PR.