Alaska's a great place to live. On sunny mornings like this, when I'm embroiled in reporting on all the unpleasantness in the world, it's great to go outside, look up at my beloved Alaska sky, and take a few deep breaths of the clean Susitna Valley air, pure as wine. Do that, and you can feel the stress just melting away.
Of course, like every other place on the planet, Alaska has its issues, too, and I'm not just talking about the winters, which are not to be taken lightly. Alaska also sits on the Pacific "Ring of Fire," and like every other place on that ring, we have volcanoes and earthquakes. On Wednesday, a 7.3-magnitude quake hit off of southwest Alaska's Sand Point, triggering tsunami warnings.
The earthquake, which struck at 12:37 pm about 54 miles south of Sand Point, prompted a tsunami warning stretching from Kennedy Entrance to Unimak Pass, including Sand Point, Cold Bay, Kodiak, and the Homer Spit. By 1:50 pm, the National Tsunami Warning Center had downgraded the warning to an advisory after detecting small tsunami waves, none of which were expected to cause significant flooding.
Although no serious damage was reported and the situation quickly stabilized, the alert lit up social media in a different way.
Alaska's leftists - yes, we have them - refused to let a good crisis go to waste. Of course, as crises go, this one ended up being not a disaster but a fizzle; the tsunami waves were scarcely detectable, even in places like the Homer Spit, much of which is only a few feet above the high tide line. Even so, this started the hue and cry about how NPR was needed to help Alaskans learn of such things.
The problem is, most of the Alaskans in Homer learned of the warning through their cellular phones.
Volunteer KMXT Kodiak radio host Mike Sirofchuck was among those who seized the moment, posting on Facebook during the warning:
“Right now is an excellent time to call Dan Sullivan and reminde [sic] him why public radio is an essential service in our community,” he wrote. “7.3 earthquake in Sand Point; Tsunami Warning issued. KMxT broadcasting up to the date essential information.”
Sirofchuck, who is often seen trolling Republican lawmakers, included the Capitol switchboard number and urged followers to contact Alaska’s Sen. Dan Sullivan to support continued federal funding for public broadcasting. The rescissions vote-a-rama was already underway in the Capitol at the time of the tsunami.
Yet, the irony was hard to miss: Most Alaskans learned of the tsunami alert not through the radio waves, but through automatic alerts sent directly to their mobile phones. Emergency text messages, part of the wireless emergency alert system, reached residents in affected areas within minutes of the earthquake.
Or, they could have listened to AM radio. But the left doesn't consider reality when it's their ox being gored.
My colleagues Nick Arama and Bonchie have, in recent days, done great work in documenting how Congressional Dems as well as NPR's senior management view small-town and rural Americans as a bunch of incompetent hicks who can't figure out the wonders of modern cellular phones - or AM radio.
Read More: Sen. John Kennedy Wrecks NPR Head After Her Hot Take on Bias and Rural Communities
Democrats Decide Treating Rural Voters Like Low-Rent Morons Is the Best Way to Save NPR and PBS
As of this writing, the recission bill is back in the House of Representatives' court. If I had to guess, I'd guess it will pass, and NPR/PBS will have to step up their annoying beg-a-thons. That's fine. If they can't survive without taxpayer subsidies, they shouldn't be in operation.
As for that tsunami, it ended up being something of a tsunamnot. But had it been serious, the people in Homer and elsewhere in the affected area (hundreds of miles from us) would have found out in time, with or without NPR. Welcome to the wide, wide world of 2025, NPR, where even rural hicks and small-town rubes have doped out the wonders of modern cellular technologies.
Editor's Note: The mainstream media continues to deflect, gaslight, spin, and lie.
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