Watch: Weatherman Forced To Evacuate During Live Hurricane Florence Report
The meteorologist at a North Carolina weather station was forced to leave mid-broadcast as the TV station began to flood on Thursday evening.
The flooding took place during their coverage of Hurricane Florence, which was downgraded to a Tropical Storm on Friday night.
Weather forecasters at WCTI, which is an ABC affiliate in the city of New Bern, North Carolina, stayed in front of their cameras till the last seconds, even after others in their building had evacuated.
“We have the situation here that has developed at the station, and that is of the water getting (so) close to the building that the building has been evacuated,” said the station’s chief meteorologist, Donnie Cox.
Cox stood with weather forecaster Shane Hinton and said, “Just so you know that we are staying here to keep you up to date.”
Our sister station, WCTI has been evacuated due to water rising around the building due to storm surge. Please keep them in your thoughts. pic.twitter.com/Et1ueYUCvc
— Ricky Matthews (@wxrjm) September 13, 2018
That assurance by the weather forecasters that they would report as long as possible came after fellow reporter Ashley Pratt posted a video of the waters rising outside their station.
https://twitter.com/AshleyPratt_Wx/status/1040372365585272832
Other staff members were evacuated first, and anchor Jamie McCutcheon tweeted that after the water began to rise in the building they “evacuated almost an entire TV station in about 15 minutes.”
“The TV station is taking on water. For everyone’s safety, we are getting most people out of the building,” Cox said.
Cox and Hinton continued their broadcast on the effects of Florence, and they attempted to stay on the air until the station was able to turn over their airtime to a sister station.
However, the two were forced to close out mid-broadcast, leaving their feed playing a radar loop of Florence’s descent on the coast, until another station was able to secure their feed and take it over.
https://twitter.com/blkahn/status/1040392771717267457
The station’s official Twitter account tweeted later in the evening, around 9 p.m., “Little rough, but we’re all out.”
We are. Little rough but we’re all out. — Jason O. Boyd, DCM
— News 12 (@wcti12) September 14, 2018
The Weather Channel reported that the city of New Bern is under a mandatory evacuation, due to the life-threatening weather conditions brought by Florence.
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