Stories From The Hurricane Highway Season 1 Episode 3 Transcript : 1996
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hello marks Sudduth of hurricanetrack.com here welcome to another chapter of stories from the hurricane Highway this is the chapter for December 18 2019 so glad you could tune in in previous episodes previous chapters I have been talking about the start of my career in tracking and studying hurricanes for a living and we're going to continue that journey tonight we're going to look at the Year 1997 and that was a big year for me it seems like every year as a big year right but each year gets progressively more involved and hopefully more interesting and in these early years there's a lot of formative events that took place people in the right places that I met and you know like they say I talked about this in the very first chapter that if you change one thing then everything else is different and that is no um no difference in what we're talking about in this episode there's always something that happens that shapes everything else so in tonight's chapter of stories from the hurricane highway I present to you the Year 1997 long time ago now it certainly seems that way so I had started my business the hurricane map making business and in 1996 I was in two hurricanes Bertha and Fran the map business took off I made one tracking map in Wilmington and we had several sponsors Etc we had those two hurricanes and in 1997 I was ready to grow that and start expanding what I was doing so we begin the Year 1997 and I was working remember I only made like a few hundred dollars profit off of the very first map and um so I had to you know do something to still try to support uh what was about to be a growing family in March of 1997 um so I was working as a bell boy at a hotel called the Blockade Runner third shift Bellman not much action during the winter time as you can imagine the beach is typically closed well not closed but it's slow and we had the hurricane damage from Bertha and Fran and so I was basically getting minimum wage a few tips to just kind of waste time in that third shift hour from what was 11 P.M to 7 A.M five nights a week or something like that and it gave me plenty of time though to Doodle to draw to plan and figure out what am I going to do next and so in the spring of 1997 a couple of things happened first my first son was born Nathan in in March and um we also had a couple of celestial events that year two comets that were very bright come at hayukataki and um of course Comet hail Bop that was the brighter of the two um I wonder was come hi kataki 1996 boy it's been so long but anyway I remember hail Bop was a big deal and that was in March of 1997 and um I was all about that I got you know my son was gonna be born in mid-march and all along I had this big plan to expand my mapping hurricane Consulting whatever project I had 1996 behind me the success of that year my experience in those two hurricanes and so I approached a radio station in Raleigh the news talk format seemed to be very fitting for what I wanted to do and I wanted to take my formula of having a radio station promote the maps I would get the sponsors and we'd give the maps away for free and whatever I thought that's a good formula let's try that so I sent an email I guess uh got in touch with the program director or somebody in sales I can't remember exactly who maybe is the general manager I do remember his name there's a gentleman by the name of George King and he was maybe one of the station managers he was definitely high up at wptf in Raleigh am 680. and I told him my idea via email and he was very interested and so I drove up to Raleigh in the spring of 1997 big anticipation of doing more of these maps and you know Raleigh was railroaded by Hurricane Fran hurricanes were all of a sudden on everybody's mind in the Carolinas it was a big deal so I thought I had a pretty good shot here at convincing them to partner with me little did I know that something really amazing would happen so drove up and I remember this just like I'm sitting here talking to you guys I had laryngitis in the spring it always seems to happen to me in the spring I had it this past year um when I was down in Florida for the premiere of the tracking the Hurricanes 2018 in Tallahassee I lost my voice back on June 12 2019 and if you remember that if you were there Brent was there he had to read the opening speech for me it's like every spring this seems to happen um I don't know if it began in 1997 or what but that was so frustrating I was just like oh talk and I mean it was horrible nevertheless we had this meeting and George King had a counter offer he said why don't I buy this from you so to speak like a franchise we sell the advertising and you produce the maps for us and you tell me what your rate would be what would you charge to do that it'll be a flat rate we'll pay you and we can sell it and they can make as much as they want I thought sure because they have a whole sales staff right that sell radio advertising and back in the day radio was a really really still a big deal these days it's uh kind of fractured and the whole advertising TV radio you know how that's gone it's been very difficult in the modern era here as of late but in 1997 radio was still Big Time top of mind the way to advertise to a lot of people for a decent amount or a fair amount of money um and he reached a decent amount of people is what I was trying to say so anyway George liked the idea especially considering that Raleigh was still reeling from Hurricane Fran so we put together a letter of memory a memorandum of agreement a contract whatever you want to call it and we agreed to a fee of around Thirty One hundred dollars or something like that that's what I would be paid and wptf and then a couple of other stations up there I think it was the news talk station in Chapel Hill and then one other radio station I don't recall which one it was maybe it was a country station and this was all part of the Curtis Media Group and so I got introduced to this idea that some radio stations are part of larger media groups ah so that was a big key so I worked real closely with George and his sales staff we had a couple of other meetings explaining what this was all about and there we go remember this is 1997. I did not have a website I did not have a web presence and I had very little graphic design knowledge in 1996 when I did the first map I did work with this gentleman as I talked about in the last chapter his name is Dan Higgins at Higgins offset and thermography at local printing shop and I started to learn a little bit more I learned about getting things camera ready the per the proper font for things how to create taglines how to get logos I was learning so um you know I talked to these radio guys who sell you know air right they sell airtime how do you sell print as well for this hurricane tracking chart that wptf would be able to promote and you could pick it up at wherever they you know whoever the sponsors were or whatever and it worked it absolutely worked it was a uh difficult you know because it was a learning curve for me still but it worked and sure enough Curtis Media Group cut me a check for just a little over three grand and in the early summer late spring early summer 1997 I don't remember what it was tens of thousands maybe it was 30 000 total Maps got printed and yes we folded them now remember in the last chapter I talked about I had them rolled my very first edition we rolled them well that quickly you know I'm not rolling 30 000 Maps so we had them folded and it was really neat because the way they folded it ended up so that there was almost like a cover uh and wptf's Logo you'd have like like a cover artwork on it and top billing for the top sponsor or whatever and it was very very exciting and I went up and I did an interview about it and it was really launching me into this world you know of being a hurricane expert you know in my very early years I'm a degreed geographer so at least I'm you know know what I'm talking about I've got meteorology background you know the history of hurricanes and we had been in Bertha and Fran right so I was growing it was working it was very very exciting and you know back in 1997 3 100 would last you know a few months for a family of three my wife myself and my new son Nathan um and you know it worked it did it worked really well I was very proud of it and thought okay we're going to expand this even more so that part of my business was solid and I continued to do research I continued to consult with people my good friend in Wilmington in New Hanover County the director of Emergency Management back in the day his name is Dan Summers and he's now down in Collier County in Florida the Naples area Dan and I did a lot of work together and there was something Brewing in uh Washington of a good nature sometimes boy oh boy as of late that certainly is nothing to be farther from the truth yeah whatever we don't do politics here but in this say in this case political whatever worked in my favor the Clinton Administration um they did some some good stuff and some of it was and I do I or I don't I don't do politics but the one good thing I remember that I owe to the Clinton Administration is the FEMA program that uh that the Clinton Administration and the FEMA group um FEMA back then was the cabinet level now it's part of what Department of Homeland Security or something I don't even know it's just restructured but James Lee Whitt was the director of FEMA and the FEMA group agency with the Clinton uh presidency backed this initiative called project impact and the aim was to create public-private Partnerships to build disaster resistant communities and they chose Deerfield Beach I can't remember the I should have looked it up um I try to just do this by the way shooting from the hip like we're just sitting around a campfire talking instead of just totally prepared um reading from a script or total show notes I literally try to sit down like we're all hanging out that's what this podcast is all about so if I forget something ah forgive me but there was three early communities in Wilmington Hanover County was one of the three Deerfield Beach was the first I believe and I think Wilmington and Hanover was the second maybe there was one in West Virginia or maybe one in California I don't remember I'm sorry but we were one of the top three and I think the area got like a million dollars in seed money to promote this public-private partnership to build disaster resistant communities and for us and for deal Deerfield Beach of course it was to build disaster resistant communities against hurricanes so I was working on that I got the announcement um information from Dan Summers and his office and it was going to be a really big deal I had these Maps out and all this information that I was putting on the back side and I want you to remember this tracking chart project is a 26 by 40 no it's 28 by 40. full size poster like 28 by 40 like a movie poster full size it was still two color even in 1997. but what we could do on the back of that 28 by 40 piece of paper was loaded with information beyond your typical here's what you do when a Hurricane's coming here's what you do when the Hurricane's over buy this buy that what I went way beyond that and we introduced in 1997 very first time to the masses and I'm pretty sure I was the first agency in the world to do this on a public broad scale almost like an advertising agency or a PR firm that is going to have a marketing campaign just say no to drugs you know fasten your seat belt you know whatever you know you create a campaign like the Incredible Edible Egg you know and everybody oh the egg is great you know what are we going to do we need to teach people about a very key word and I learned all of this from Dan summers in his office and other emergency managers around the state and that word is mitigation and it sounded very alien at first what litigation no no mitigation you want to mitigate damage not eliminate because you can't we're fighting Mother Nature here but you can lessen the effects lessen the impacts mitigate so this project in 1997 introduced tens of thousands of people and even more when we talked about it on the radio to this concept of mitigation and I do still I think to this day that was the first time in the modern era that anybody had ever really heard about it in mass and I was very honored to sort of be that spokesperson to introduce this concept of mitigation disaster resistance whatever to the public and it was a huge responsibility too trying to be able to you know translate that to people and make sure that they understand what mitigation is all about and how to use it to you know build smarter um and resist the damage from uh hurricanes okay so that was a very very pivotal moment for me taking that concept of mitigation first understanding it myself to where I could explain it to people and boy it was it was so much fun so we had a big ceremony in Wilmington um FEMA came down uh James Lee Witt the director of FEMA all the local news agencies came out the radio stations including wgni the local adult contemporary station 102.7 wgni who or is it whom whatever um I guess it's whom but uh they were called speaking of slogans the hurricane Information Station and I remember hearing them in 1996 sort of promoting that where the hurricane Information Station and I remember tuning in to them and this is very very important so the media working with Emergency Management working with the public in the private sectors everybody working together to have a common message of hurricane preparedness hurricane awareness the right information One Voice a consistent voice was critical so wgni was a big partner as was WECT w w a y the newspaper the star news here in Wilmington this was really big and it caught on very quickly and I got to know some of the people at wgni and the and the TV stations Etc and we all were starting to work together and that would go on to shape some things that we'll talk about in a future chapter here but that was the start this seed was planted in New Hanover County where we had just had Bertha and Fran right major damage significant damage that we hadn't seen since the 50s really and it really got everybody's attention as did I with what I was doing and um I thought all right I like this you know this is going to work so uh I worked at the hotel at the Blockade Runner all throughout the spring and you know made a little bit of money like I said off the tracking map um from the Curtis Media Group and then something else happened that showed me that this is going to be a tough road buddy the hurricane highway is not always going to be smooth you know there's going to be potholes on it you want to go to the metaphoric we're out here here you go uh I got a real quick lesson in you know things are not always going to be smooth along the hurricane Highway and that lesson was El Nino now what do I need to really help me get my name out there on a year in and year out basis hurricanes if there are no hurricanes very few people need Mark and that's just the way it goes in in and that seems short-sighted but it's true it's like being a superhero you know nobody needs Superman and I know that's quite a leap here but just bear with me it's a good analogy um you know no I'm not Superman but you get it you know if Superman's around that means something bad's happening right and then the the modern era you've got Mr Incredible from that you know animated Pixar uh hit the The Incredibles and The Incredibles too and you remember what they did they banished them to retirement go away we don't want the superheroes that's a whole other story but it's true if there are hurricanes then my phone would ring off the hook so to speak and that's understandable because I was a hurricane a budding hurricane expert so when you have an El Nino As We Know it really tends to put the kibosh on Atlantic hurricanes so here I was seemingly rocketing pretty quickly in my career to some pretty significant success based on 1996 you know in terms of fortunate good luck in my business not so good for the people around here but I don't control hurricanes you know whatever right you just go with what you do I don't make them come and I don't form them but I I had a business based around them so you know 96 really helped to propel me but 1997 uh was like a speed bump on the hurricane Highway because the El Nino was huge I mean it was like even Dan Higgins I'll never forget this I went in in the late spring we were wrapping up everything tightening up all the maps and all the designs and everything and Dan pulled up an article or maybe he showed me something in the paper I don't remember but he's like I don't know about this hurricane season did you read about that El Nino I'm like what so I looked at it and my heart sank I was like oh no because I knew enough by then you know to realize oh man a significant El Nino because they were talking about it you know he probably read something that had some information in there from um you know Dr Gray or somebody that uh this El Nino was gonna be significant so I was like oh boy um what am I gonna do we're probably not gonna have any hurricanes I don't mean to laugh because but remember I don't make hurricanes so you can't get mad at me when you run a business that's completely dependent on hurricanes then no hurricanes is like oh that's rough so that El Nino manifested itself in a big big way and it was one of the most significant only at the time it was the biggest one it was like a super a super Nino as they call it and it literally just shut down the Atlantic hurricane season we had I think one major hurricane that year Erica hurricane Danny was like a cat one formed a lot like hurricane Barry in 2019 from a disturbance that came off the continental U.S into the Gulf and then you know I didn't have the funding in a vehicle or whatever to go down to the gulf I wasn't covering hurricanes outside of North Carolina yet because you know they kept coming to me at least they had in 1996 right and so it was like oh man that's you know what am I going to do so that's what happened there was like not many hurricanes that year yet I still was successful uh you know I got the maps out and so I guess I should back up not only did I do the one for Curtis Media Group we did three of them for the three stations up there two news talks and I think a country station but also I I did the one down in Wilmington again with waav am 980 and the same sponsors and I even made a little bit of money off of that that's I kind of forgot that part so I had four Publications out hurricane Maps Enterprises had four Publications Wilmington Raleigh Chapel Hill and Goldsboro I remember now is Goldsboro it was a country station uh I believe it was Goldsboro and so you know there was that and I thought okay I can make it I can make it we can weather this quiet you say weather the storm right but you also have to weather the quiet you got to weather the comb between the storms uh but it had momentum and we had this project impact that was just starting out and that was going to be a major injection of business opportunities Innovation and really for me as we go through these next couple of chapters 98 99 would Propel me uh at this early stage of my career into the stratosphere it really would and I'll we'll talk about that as we move forward um but 1997 was this key year you know where I really started to ramp up and build on what I did in 96 I had my son born Etc just to recap here and I was ready you know I thought this is it I'm going to be able to do this someday as a full-time job so if 97 went on uh I left the Blockade Runner as a Bellboy and got a job uh with the city of Wilmington in their GIS Department I think it was also in their tax records or something like that ironically it was right across the street from where I worked with the county in 1996. and that's how I finished out in 1997 I had a um I think it was a one or two year job or maybe it was open-ended I don't remember for sure it was not a like career job where oh here you go Mark you know 32 000 a year full benefits you're eight to five it was you know eight to five you know nine dollars an hour and maybe a year whatever it was like a project it was like a step above being an intern maybe it led to something full time if I wanted it but not quite because they were figuring out their GIS GIS means geographic information systems by the way computer mapping that kind of thing and um so that's what I did you know to pay the bills uh I made pretty good money doing that you know relatively speaking right and my wife was working uh up at Pender Memorial Hospital still and we had a baby you know we had this little you know born in March so by the summer he was you know starting to crawl whatever and you know there I was I was a father uh in 1997 and it's like whoa talking about life changing you know here I am I got a career starting I'm trying to develop this entrepreneurship you know my own path I am using my degree in everything I'm doing you know whether it's my entrepreneur job creating my own thing or working for the city of Wilmington helping with their mapping system and I'm still out there every possible moment that I could go learn from somebody somebody at the Weather Service somebody at a TV station many of the personalities here in Wilmington whether it was George Eliot early on at wct to this gentleman named Jeff Hardin TV meteorologist at channel six WECT um you know the local emergency management coordinators you'd have area coordinators any conference I could go to locally I would soaking it up soaking it up what can we talk about with the people how can we I mean my energy level which of course I was 26 years old so why not right was off the charts I mean unlimited energy even with a little baby that's hard to do um and we did not do daycare you know my wife and I decided early on we're not doing daycare when she's not working she'll watch Nathan and when I'm not working I'll watch Nathan but no daycare so you know I had this little boy to kind of introduce to the world of weather whenever I could and it was a little uh infant crawling around he didn't care he didn't know but I loved it it was all part of this new thing you know two years now after I graduated college and I was well on my way I really was and it was an exciting time uh I also bought finally with some of the funding woohoo you know it's like reinvest here we go I bought a Gateway 2000 computer remember those came in the cow boxes I did about a Gateway 2000 computer and I was connected to the internet all right I sure was it was like wow um I had a Windows graphical user interface whatever it was back then what Windows 95 I guess right and my world became much bigger I was able to do more than ever before learning Photoshop learning how to write you know and we I still didn't have a website but I had like whatever geocities or something you know there was an online world that was starting and I was able to research and reach out to people through email different authors of books from Carrie Emmanuel and MIT to Dr J Baker a geographer at FSU and a tremendously well respected scientist and other people it started really allowing me to do more learning then yeah I mean come on you know the internet now it's like the Library of Alexandria writing at your fingertips times a zillion and that started for me in Earnest in 1997 and I had these Visions you know literally and figuratively both in my head and out jot them down of building something on the internet as we knew it back then what we now know as a website what would I do how would I do it lots and lots of ideas going forward to really make hurricane tracking and information exciting informative and not scary remove the hype and the BS that we know is out there that hype machine and just make it more like you're promoting the release of a major motion picture look at it like that a big movie is getting ready to come out this summer it's got a huge trailer with it a poster at the theater it's a big deal we all anticipate it and nobody's ever scared of a movie premiere it's exciting you know and that's what I wanted to do for Hurricane awareness and information make it exciting because I figured if I could capture people's attention I could teach them something and at that young age I knew a lot you know and I figured my energy would rub off more than my experience in other words what I lacked and experienced I made up for with my energy and my passion and that was all happening in 97 so even though it was a down year hurricane wise it was a really amazing year for me to take a leap forward on a lot of different levels brand new dad got on the internet expanded my map Universe into the Carolinas or into North Carolina more than ever you know like more than I could have dreamed right made a little extra money you know it's good life was good and I was ready I was ready for that next chapter that would be 1998 which we'll cover next week so there you go 1997 uh what a year what a year so uh again a recap here as to what we'll be doing in the future in the early part here as we get into the early 2000s this will be chronological next week I'll go over 1998 you know which is another huge year um as I said they're gonna almost all there's only one year there really wasn't that huge and we'll get to that down the road a piece but eventually especially as we start introducing the cast of characters right that I came to know um we're gonna involve more people and the podcast will start having a guest that's coming you got to start somewhere in these first few chapters are going to lay the groundwork so that eventually I'm going to start interviewing other people or not even interviewing we're just going to talk that's what I want to do I just want to talk these are stories from the hurricane Highway this is not just me you know well this happened and then that happened I'm trying to tell you stories like again we're sitting around at a dinner together like I say the old campfire analogy and just tell stories of how things evolved and you get to get those intimate details uh that it'll eventually be in a book someday down the road and this will all be the groundwork for it as I said in chapter one when I'm done with this and I will never be done because this is always ongoing until I retire I'll be able to just tell my Ghost Rider oh go download all the podcast episodes from stories from the hurricane Highway and there's your outline for the book piece of cake it's done all right so that is it that's uh that's 1997. what a year it was and what a career at it has been and you got to start somewhere and those were the early Beginnings there 95 96 97 a lot of progress all right so that does wrap it up for this episode this chapter whatever you want to call it of stories from the hurricane Highway you know what it's so awesome to have you guys part of this and it truly is exclusive to our patreon patrons our supporters this community that we've grown for the past two to three years tremendous support the financial part is what makes the world go around but your feedback the engagement what we do together and it's only going to grow from there imagine when we have several hundred to maybe even maybe one day thousands of patrons and what we're going to be able to do not only with being able to reinvest the funding into more exciting things but just that engagement is so important and your feedback along the way is just uh vital and I appreciate it so much I'm glad you could be a part of this and support what I do not only with your dollars your hard-earned money but your encouragement and your enthusiasm it makes me want to sit here and do this with all the energy that I had back when I was 26 all right so thank you so much I appreciate it I am Mark setup this is it uh a rap as I say for stories from the hurricane Highway the Year 1997 I am Mark suddath hurricane track.com thanks for listening I'll be back with you next week