It was a dark and stormy night….

In Alabama, for some reason that is not understood, many major calamities and disasters occur in the late afternoon or at night.  And during my radio career, these unfortunate events always seemed to happen when I was at the station, or, trying to leave so that I would not be stranded.  Needless to say, through either bad luck or lack of proper, strategic planning on my part, I usually did, in fact, get “stuck” at the station with several other unfortunate souls.

I can recall four events that required me to stay and “watch the store,” as my senior managers and other station employees were making a mad dash to the door so they could make it to the safety and comfort of their homes and loved ones.  There were times when I felt like I did when I was a kid, and my mother would leave me at the schoolhouse door in the morning. Cold, lonely, and afraid.   When I use the terms “stuck,” or “stranded,” I am speaking of a situation that existed in which there was no hope that I would get home for at least 48 hours.  And, during that time, there was little hope of having any substantial nourishment other than what could be bought from the building’s vending machines.  There were a few cases that required us to “borrow,” (i.e. break glass)  some of these vending machine items when everyone’s available cash ran out.  And did I mention lack of sleep?  If there was any of that strange state of existence to be had, it usually occurred on a hard floor, covered with that cheap, thin office carpeting that should have been replaced several years prior.  I swear I saw a spout of wild grass coming out of that carpet one time.  But, I digress.

One of the four events that I mentioned above was the Blizzard of ’93, a.k.a. “the storm of the century,” I have mentioned this event on my personal blog on MOODLE.  Birmingham had a blizzard!  That term was very foreign to most everyone in the area, especially when related to the place where when a half-inch of snow is forecasted, schools close, churches cancel services and a month’s production run of bread and milk disappears in a couple of hours.  There never has been any empirical explanation why bread and milk are staples for southern snowstorms.  But, I  digress, again.

The real moral of the story of the Blizzard of 1993 from my own personal perspective is how a group of young men and women came together, relying on each person’s unique talents, experience, knowledge and credibility,  formed an impromptu team that accomplished something unheard of, until that weekend, in Birmingham radio history.  I consider what happened with our team, comprised of part-time and full-time on-air, news, production and administrative personnel to be the high watermark of my entire professional career.

There were two radio stations operating on the same floor, but separated by functional space.  My station was the adult-contemporary FM station, and I did the midday on-air shift weekdays and on Saturday.  The other station was our news-talk sister station.  We rarely worked together, as our facility was separated into two distinct working areas that were designed for the specific purpose of each station.  We passed each other in the elevator lobby, but that was about the extent of our collaboration.

At the beginning of the week, when we were informed of this impending “super-storm,” by our station’s partnered TV meteorologist, many on the staff said, “Yeah, right!  Whatever!”  We had seen more busted snow forecasts that busted soda bottles on the side of the road.  But by Thursday afternoon, it was becoming more apparent that this storm was actually going to happen.  The program director of the AM and myself (the assistant program director for the FM), started to make some minimum preparations.  Our Programming VP laughed at both of us when we approached him with an outline of what we thought might be appropriate staffing for the stations.  In fact,  he told us that we just wanted to have a pajama party that weekend.  We both talked to our respective staffs and asked people to volunteer to ride out the storm at the office.  By the time the stampede out the door that Friday afternoon had ended, there were 10 of us left.

The next morning, after spending the night at a hotel two building down from our office, we awoke to something that was almost too hard to even comprehend.  The official storm total for the blizzard was 13 inches.  But there were drifts all over the city that were three and four feet deep.  The city was paralyzed past the point that had ever been seen with previous snow and ice events.  As I walked up this hill to the station, I was trudging through snow that literally came up to my waist.  A walk that would normally take no more than 10 minutes, took almost an hour to accomplish.

Overnight as the blizzard had progressed, people in the area started to come to the realization that this was a disaster.  Power was out to thousands of homes, along with telephone service.  Because they had heard the weather forecasters cry wolf so many times, most people did not make preparations for an extended amount of time without power, heat and food.  During this time, there were two part-time news-talk staff members who started to take calls on the AM.  As these calls increased they realized that blizzard had resulted in a true emergency. And, even as green as these two people were, they had this innate knowledge that told them to drop programming and start putting calls on the air.

 

The calls were for assistance with a sick relative that needed power to operate a respirator.  There were calls from young families with very young children that without firewood delivered by a good Samaritan, they would have had no heat.  There were calls from people who were willing to get out in their own properly-equipped vehicles and drive in treacherous conditions to deliver medication to a diabetic.  There were even calls from owners of restaurants who were willing to go to their stores, cook food and have it delivered by the National Guard.  The types of calls that were received go on and on.  From all ages and all ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, there were thousands of people in need.  And there were thousands more that were willing to brave the storm and the aftermath to help out in any way they could.  In a city that has seen division and strife over the years, this was truly amazing to witness.  And even more amazing to actually have played a very small part in it all.

These calls went on for four straight days.  It was at this time the city started to defrost out from under the heavy blanket of snow.  We were stranded at the station for this entire period. We all took turns working 12-hours shifts.  We ran out of all food Sunday afternoon.  We did not even mention this fact on  the air, but by dinner time Sunday night, a National Guard vehicle had made it up the mountain to our office and delivered hot food from one of those restaurants mentioned above.  The only thing I think that all of us eventually really missed was a can of deodorant and a toothbrush and toothpaste.

Something happened with the team that had remained behind.  And I really never had an official name for it until I read this week’s assignments.  We had formed an emergent response group utilizing many of the tenants of Transactive Memory Systems (TMS).  (Majchrzak, Jarvenpaa, & Hollingshead, 2007).  Our team quickly coalesced around the news-talk program director.  This person was a veteran broadcaster, with high levels of knowledge about leading a team in for expanded coverage of a big news events.  This was an important fact because many of the members of the team left behind were from the music station (myself included). 

Relying on his knowledge, and the credibility that we all shared in him because of his reputation, those of us who were very inexperienced in the news field quickly became junior news reporters and news-talk show hosts.  We eventually decided to take the two stations and begin a simulcast, carrying the news-talk station’s content.  When we basically had one station to operate, the experts of the news talk format could concentrate their effort toward the on-air product, while other members of the team served as information gatherers and aggregators for whomever was actually on the air. 

Many of the formal boundaries established by title melted away, and reformed along lines of communication and responsibility that was very unique to the situation.  There was more of a coordinator leading the group, the person who had the credibility among all group members, to become the de facto leader.  Full and part-time members of the team shared lateral responsibilities and decision-making authority, and respect was paid to an individual’s area of strength, in regards to their contribution to the whole group.  In relation to shared responsibility, we were capable of allowing delegation, and even delegating ourselves, based on our level of expertise for the many tasks we had to complete.  We had a “shared conceptualization of who knew what in our group” (Majchrzak et al., 2007, p. 151).  We also had a “shared goal” in that we were one of the primary communication points in the city and we were not just performing any longer (Majchrzak et al., 2007, p. 151) .

We were helping out a city, and thousands of its citizens who needed help in a very difficult situation.  Our goals were not to entertain, but to assist and inform. In retrospect, we were using primary TMS  theory concepts throughout the entire process.  We knew who did what best among all of us, and used our specific knowledge of our jobs to contribute to the collective performance of our team (Majchrzak et al., 2007). 

Reference

Majchrzak, A., Jarvenpaa, S. L., & Hollingshead, A. B. (2007).  Coordinating expertise among emergent groups responding to disasters.  Organization Science, 18(1), 147-161.