When the equipment’s destroyed it’s not going to work.

I’m in Kansas this weekend to go to my friends’ M– & M–’s wedding here. My mother is a longtime friend of a family in Greensburg, Kansas, the place that got hit by the gigantic tornado last night. We’ve been watching the coverage of the tornado damage this morning.

I like watching the reporters try to comprehend Kansas. They just don’t really have any idea what they are looking at or what to ask about. We are just not the sort of place that the folks in CNN understand. They do like to call this part of the world “Tornado Alley.” As if anyone who lives here thinks of the place that way. Oh well. I guess no one up in Indiana actually thinks of themselves as living in the “Rust Belt.”

My favorite moment on CNN this morning came when a CNN reporter did a news conference with a State Highway patrol guy. The basic theme of the Highway Patrol’s testimony was that communications were so damaged that they really didn’t know much yet. Nevertheless, the reporters kept asking very specific questions in hopes that maybe he did know details about that one thing.

Then, a reporter asked something about anti-terrorism networking. She said something like, “What about the new anti-terrorism communications that link up different agencies. Are you saying that isn’t in place yet?”

That question kind of annoyed the highway patrol officer. He said something like, “Ma’am, all our communications equipment has been destroyed, so you’re going to have to cut us a little slack. The towers that are essential to that system are all down.”

Then he went on with my favorite quote of the day:

“You know, if the equipment’s destroyed it’s not going to work.”