In Case Of Emergency, Read Blog

When Jennings Carney is not writing and editing the very helpful “Ready Communities Partnership Update” of the National Congress for Secure Communities, he is on the keyboardist of the band Pontiak.

In June, Jennings and the band were touring the Midwest in support of their new album Kale. They found themselves in the midst of the terrible weather and massive flooding. Always thinking about disaster preparedness even while on the road, Jennings sent me this email:

“While on tour we had to cancel a show in Iowa City b/c of the
flooding. In fact, we got within 15 miles of the show and then found
out that we would have to make a 150 mile detour to get to the venue.
Incredible. We drove down the Mississippi to St. Louis ahead of the
flooding and we were caught in the most intense thunderstorm in
Michigan I have ever been in — in fact, it could have been a small
tornado.

We were driving down from Canada and were on the Interstate when the
storm hit. … Had to slow down at first, and then had to stop
entirely. The rain was so heavy that it was a whiteout, winds shaking
our fully-loaded van like a rocking chair, some hail, and wind gusts
that were literally bending the trees 90 degrees.

While en route to Iowa City, I found it was very interesting that we
couldn’t get road closure updates anywhere – we had an iPhone and I
was on the phone with my Mom looking for real-time traffic reports -
nothing. The police who were directing traffic had no real-time
information to give us and were not aware of updates to road
conditions.”

From Jennings’ interesting perspective of the tour bus, he illustrates the need for better and more integrated public emergency communications whether it means getting home or to a gig.