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Last week, Barrett Media reported on Mark Starling, the team at iHeartMedia in Asheville, NC, and their marathon hurricane coverage. (BMM 10/3)
Checking back in a week later not a lot has changed. Starling has only briefly left the station since the storm began. He spends his nights sleeping on a blow-up mattress in the conference room.
His family has relocated to Atlanta. His wife, a mental health counselor, provides occasional coping tips and reassures listeners that “it’s OK not to feel OK.”
Starling told the Asheville Citizen-Times, “There was not an intention to turn storm coverage into what it’s turned into; it naturally and organically just went that way.”
According to Starling, the station has formed teams on the ground. He is coordinating with a community member named Chris Henderson. Henderson called to report that he was conducting wellness checks based on information he heard from callers on the radio. Henderson proposed that they join forces.
Starling said that the station sends Henderson lists of people reported missing daily. Those are received via email or callers. In the past week alone, they have successfully located 83 families, providing reassurance to their loved ones and extending assistance by delivering supplies and dispatching volunteer chainsaw crews to clear debris for those stranded in their homes.
Starling continued to the Citizen-Times, “I think it’s really shown a lot of people who might have forgotten about radio, or maybe just didn’t listen to the radio much anymore; it’s shown them that there is a need in our world for it. Because when it came right down to it when that storm was going on, it was the only medium that was left that was able to get people information.”
