I did a skype interview this morning w/ Matt Sampson of The Weather Channel, he interviewed me about our chase video that has gotten so much attention the past few days. This has been something that I had decided I wasn’t going to do any more interviews about because I felt it detracted from the real story, and that’s the people that are hurting in Mayflower and Vilonia. Yesterday, I sealed a deal w/ a media company to manage the distribution and licensing of the video so fortunately my phone will stop ringing now. This is no exaggeration, I received over 300 requests from around the world to use the video and just about half of those requests were also requests to interview me. While we did do a few interviews, I declined way more and started pushing people to Drew Davis w/ the Arkansas Dream Center instead so he could talk about the relief efforts.
The reason I did the interview w/ The Weather Channel this morning was because I wanted to get some things out in the open. Yesterday I had two separate videos shared with me of other chasers that had driven dangerously close to tornadoes in Mississippi. It’s a miracle they are all alive, just like Mike, Frazier, and I, we are walking miracles as far as I’m concerned. I’m convinced that we could find ourselves in the same position were were in Sunday Evening and we’d die 9 times out of 10. God watched over us and hand his hand on my truck, there’s no doubt in my mind.
I’ve been totally open from the beginning that I took full responsibility for getting us in a bad position for the Mayflower tornado. I’m not sure exactly what happened but I think the idea knowing the storm was literally miles from my home where my wife and 2 year old son were hunkered down in our safe room combined w/ pure adrenaline led to me making some very poor decisions. We should have been at least a mile down the road, if not more. I think I also underestimated the storm, all of us did. It was at least a half a mile wide when it crossed I-40, and we know today that it has been classified as an EF4. Again, I have cold chills thinking about how we were literally inside that tornado and it’s mercy for over a minute.
In the interview I shared w/ Matt exactly what I just shared with you here, we were in a terrible position. I never should have been that close. I knew better. I will not ever chase storms in the field again for a lot of reasons, instead I plan to build onto my home command center and finish my radio certification so I can feed information to the chasers and spotters on the ground.
I’m told my interview is going to be part of a larger package that will run possibly today. Matt said that when he has it ready he will let me preview it with my family and friends before it goes live. I’m so hopeful that all of the chasers and currently chasing w/ limited experience, and even those that have considered chasing will heed my admissions and take them to heart and remember my mistakes when they are on their next chase. The job that a storm chaser / spotter plays on the ground is to radio information back to the National Weather Service so that they can be better informed and rapidly get the information out to the public in an effort to save lives. Anytime a chaser gets into the mix and finds himself in the middle of the tornado, they’ve done more harm than they have good. That’s just pure fact. Sure, a popular YouTube video that gets a half a million views is impressive, but not near as impressive as a family having an additional 5 or 10 minutes to get themselves to shelter when a storm is approaching. I could care less about the video at this point, all it has done in my opinion has taken a lot of focus away from the real issue at hand, many of our friends are hurting right now, they have real needs. That’s what we should be focused on.
If you’d like to get involved, or simply make a donation, please visit: http://ardreamcenter.tv/tornado
Questions or Comments?