{"id":39,"date":"2008-08-31T00:30:25","date_gmt":"2008-08-31T04:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joesindorf.com\/blog\/?p=39"},"modified":"2008-08-31T00:59:25","modified_gmt":"2008-08-31T04:59:25","slug":"flirtin-with-disaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/joesindorf.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/31\/flirtin-with-disaster\/","title":{"rendered":"flirtin&#8217; with disaster"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Wow&#8230; two hurricanes, two tropical depressions&#8230; yeah baby we&#8217;re flirtin&#8217; with disaster!\u00a0 Sorry Molly Hatchet for rippin off <a href=\"http:\/\/www.last.fm\/music\/Molly+Hatchet\/_\/Flirtin%27+With+Disaster\" target=\"_blank\">your song<\/a>, but it works!\u00a0 I&#8217;ve been part of a few productions that have been disasters in the recent past, but I haven&#8217;t been in a huge natural disaster for a couple of years&#8230; and the adrenaline is starting to pump again.<\/p>\n<p>My family and friends think I&#8217;ve lost it. (again)\u00a0 I&#8217;m sitting here watching The Weather Channel (that&#8217;s their first clue) and cheering on the storms &#8212; Gustav heading to the Gulf, Hannah (wouldn&#8217;t it have been sweet for its name to be Hillary?) headed to the islands and then maybe Florida, and two more potential big storms in the Atlantic.<\/p>\n<p>Before I get flamed, I don&#8217;t wish suffering on anyone. I have spent decades in more than 65 nations working with people who have lost everything. I covered Hurricane Katrina, the Mexico City earthquake, volcanos, typhoons, military coups, wars, I&#8217;ve worked in the largest refugee camp in the world in Peshawar Pakistan, produced live TV from a community of squatters living on the garbage dump in Manila Philippines.\u00a0I&#8217;ve been shot at for being in the wrong place at the wrong time just\u00a0to show the world the truth.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve paid for the funeral for a family in Zambia who had nothing and whose wife and mother had just died of AIDS. I&#8217;ve been at the borrowed hut of a 16 year old former slave and her two children of rape\u00a0who had escaped from her Arab slavemaster to return to her homeland in South Sudan &#8211; who owned literally nothing. Even her one rag of a dress was borrowed. I still see the face of the mother in Ethiopia staring blankly into my camera lens, no tears left to\u00a0cry,\u00a0as she covered the lifeless body of her child with a cloth, another death of famine.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve been witness to unspeakable loss and suffering, and experienced great pain myself, and I wish it on no one.<\/p>\n<p>But if you&#8217;ve covered hard news, been at the scene of history being made, and put true, responsible (and award-winning helps!) reporting on the air, you get itchy when big news happens and you&#8217;re not there. So, if Gustav turns nasty&#8230; my bags and HD camera are packed!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wow&#8230; two hurricanes, two tropical depressions&#8230; yeah baby we&#8217;re flirtin&#8217; with disaster!\u00a0 Sorry Molly Hatchet for rippin off your song, but it works!\u00a0 I&#8217;ve been part of a few productions that have been disasters in the recent past, but I haven&#8217;t been in a huge natural disaster for a couple of years&#8230; and the adrenaline [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joesindorf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joesindorf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joesindorf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joesindorf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joesindorf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/joesindorf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joesindorf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joesindorf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joesindorf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}