It was windy. It was rainy. Homes and vehicles were crushed under the weight of rising floodwater and falling tree limbs. People died. ////The impact of the Patriot’s Day storm was an emergency situation.////Probably unnecessary///// But unless you worked for a local public safety department or dispatch, you wouldn’t have known it, despite us living in The Information Age.////This doesn’t quiet work as it’s phrased. Anyone who was looking out their window knew it.////

At noon on Monday, while driving along the Maine Turnpike, I tuned into the local National Public Radio station. What came on was surprisingly peaceful: Beautiful classical music.

Normally, this would have been fine. I’m getting older, and I don’t mind being soothed once in a while by a violin concerto or two. But this ride down the turnpike was different. I wanted to be informed, not soothed. I wanted the kind of peace that comes from a different source – knowing what’s going on.///Probably don’t need the preceding sentence. You’re just repeating yourself.////// I wanted it now and in copious amounts, like the rain driving down around me.////This metaphor isn’t quite working.//////

Plainly put, since National Public Radio is government funded, it should be the go-to source for everything people need to know during an emergency.////I’m not sure you want to lay this whole argument at the door of NPR.///// Monday and Tuesday in Maine was an emergency situation.///You’ve already said this.//// In such an emergency////Okay, I get it. It was an emergency/////, public radio should have had continuous coverage to help people stay informed. We want to know how much rain is falling and when it’s expected to stop? What should we do when the water enters the basement? When should we start boiling water? Where is it safe to drive? Who do we call when a tree falls on our house?////The questions are good.////// We turn to the radio in times of emergency to hear information, not Classical music./////You’re just repeating yourself here./////

Later on Monday, it got worse. I wasn’t able to get back home to Windham that night////where were you?//// and considered staying at a nearby shelter. I figured going on the Red Cross site would provide me a list of shelters open in Maine, and possibly what they offered for services. Instead of a list of road closures, shelters and ways to cope during a storm, what greeted me on the site’s main page was the full-page icon: “2007 Real Heroes Awards.”

During the height of the storm, the worst since 1998 in Maine, it is unconscionable that the American Red Cross had no information easily accessible on its site. I searched and searched but couldn’t find anything useful.

In this enlightened and aware age, you’d think we could get the information we need more readily from the sources we look to in times of trouble. It’s disturbing we don’t have that assurance. Makes you wonder why we taxpayers are funding such things that aim to soothe, rather than inform.////The whole taxpayer angle seems a bit curmudgeonly for such a situation./////

-John Balentine, editor