Metro area radio station degrades tornado victims during talk-show

Savannah Beaty - Senior, Co-Editor | News

During the cleanup after Putnam County’s Enhanced Fujita (EF)-4 tornado, Nashville radio personalities hosted a talk show commenting on tornado victims and the destruction of rural areas. Over 13,000 people signed a petition to boycott supporting the “Woody and Jim” show on 107.5 The River iHeart Radio.

The hosts of the show ignorantly discussed how Putnam County suffered more deaths from the tornado, despite Nashville being more densely populated.

The show started off like any other, but the tone completely changed when host Zac Woodward started making comments on the people of Putnam County.

"[First responders] also said that they see more deaths in those areas because people don't have as much education or money or resources to protect themselves,” Woodward said. “And if you think about the structure of the homes in more of those rural communities, a lot of them are pre-manufactured homes, so they don't really have a safe place. If a tornado comes through, the whole house is going."

In layman's terms, the host was calling the people of Putnam County uneducated and poor. The hosts of this show took the time to point out what was wrong with Cookeville instead of sympathizing with its victims.

However, the median price of homes in the area is $229,000 as of 2018. The location that was completely destroyed were almost all brick houses, not mobile homes. The people who “don’t have as much education” that lost their homes, or even lives, were children, engineers, pastors, doctors, police officers, nurses, professors and many more.

People of Putnam County were not failed by a “lack of preparation,” as Woodward said, but by the fact that tornado warnings were cancelled moments after their issuance. Most of the area assumed that the storm was over because news stations were more interested in covering the damage to east Nashville and Germantown, rather than showing the radar when the storm intensified.

At the same time that the tornado warning went out, the Verizon Wireless cell phone tower was destroyed. The tornado hit three minutes after the warning was supposed to be sent out, but many did not receive it due to power outages and a lack of access to cellular data.

107.5 The River apologized for any misconceptions by claiming that “[they] never said [citizens of Putnam County] were uneducated,” and that they never meant to hurt anyone’s feelings. They only wanted to inform.

More than 400 homes were damaged, 31 commercial buildings were destroyed and 100 homes were completely demolished. 18 people died. More than 100 people were injured. The tornado had a wind speed of 174 mph. Nashville was hit with category EF-2 and EF-3 tornadoes. Thousands of people showed up to volunteer and donate blood the next day.

Cookeville did nothing wrong, but the hosts of the “Woody and Jim” show portray its citizens as poor hillbillies rather than focusing on what came after this horrific disaster.