"New Tourism" Coming to Florida

[Ixolib]

This ought to create some "interesting" stories in the coming months...

By Noaki Schwartz
KNIGHT RIDDER

MIAMI - With a predicted increase in hurricane activity in the coming years, Florida may also attract an unexpected kind of tourism this season: hurricane safaris.

A handful of companies in Florida, Texas and Oklahoma have started offering "hurricane tours" as the ultimate in storm-chasing experiences. Started largely by self-described "weather freaks," who began offering tornado tours years ago, a few branched out to hurricane tours.

"You can climb a mountain or jump out of a plane but can never tame a hurricane or tornado -- that's for sure," said Roger Hill of Silver Lining Tours in Houston. "It's one of the last frontiers that no one will ever conquer."

The willing pay $1,500 and more for three days of little sleep, canned tuna and crackers and miserable weather. Customers are on a 48-hour e-mail notice list. They fly out to the site of a predicted landfall, jump in vans decked out with reclining seats and the Weather Channel and drive miles to a parking structure to wait for the storm.

After it passes, the tourists wander around to see the damage. Storm chasing protocol dictates that it is in poor taste to boast about one's experience in what one chaser described as "mixed company." In other words: Don't talk about the great hurricane you just witnessed next to a native who just lost his home.

Hill had several trial runs before officially starting his tours with Hurricane Rita in September -- the first group visited Port Arthur and Beaumont, Texas. He charges about $500 a day for three- or four-day trips. Silver Lining's Web site is stripped with black clouds, lightning and tornadoes and the pitch: "Are you ready for the atmospheric adventure of a lifetime?"

Including the trial runs, Hill has followed hurricanes Charley, Jean, Rita and Katrina along the Gulf Coast and in Florida, including Marathon, Melbourne, Vero Beach and Punta Gorda. Hill expects he will be back in the Sunshine State this season.

David Gold, who offers logistical support at Silver Lining, admits the business is controversial. But he said they do not celebrate the outcome of these natural disasters: mobile homes with crumpled roofs, downed power lines and snaking gas lines.

"There are people that will think it's disgusting that someone would take people into harm's way," said Gold, who says he has a doctorate in atmospheric sciences from Texas A&M University. "But if we're staying out of harm's way, I don't see the problem."

Tour operators say they do their best to avoid unnecessary risks. Clients are warned of the dangers of hurricane tours, which Gold believes are more life-threatening than tornado chases. While tornadoes can be viewed a mile or two away, with hurricanes, "you're in the elements and can't get out," he said.

Gold says Silver Lining has taken about 15 people on tour so far. Customers have included a doctor and his 70-year-old mother and a couple from England. Most, say tour operators, are adrenaline or weather junkies. Among them is Stuart Robinson of Mountsorrel, England, who was determined to experience more than his rainy homeland where, he said, "one inch of snow would bring the entire country to a standstill."

Robinson, a computer analyst, schedules work around storm season, and from August to October, he has a bag packed and ready. He set up a command station in his house where he monitors weather patterns around the world.

Robinson says he "cried in his soup" when he missed Hurricane Katrina to go to his parents' 50th anniversary celebration. His girlfriend, he says, does not share his interest in storms and refers to herself as "the weather widow."

Those close to Robinson struggle to understand -- and he struggles to explain -- his passion.

"Flying 5,000 miles and putting yourself in the direct path of a hurricane doesn't appeal to too many people," he said.

Robinson met other like-minded individuals when he traveled with Silver Lining to witness Hurricane Rita in Texas. Robinson said the images he captured of victims helped people back home understand just how devastating a hurricane can be.

"It's not just the weather per se; it's witnessing people evacuating, the devastation and emergency surveys rebuilding," Robinson said.

Tour operators can relate.

Brian Barnes, co-owner of Violent Skies Tours in Tulsa, Okla., started offering the hurricane tours this year. His fascination with severe weather started in 1993, during his junior year prom night in Oklahoma when a tornado ripped through Tulsa, demolishing his car. He threw himself atop his prom date to keep her from flying off and after the tornado passed, he discovered baseball size bruises on his body.

"It triggered something inside me to figure it out," said Barnes, who experienced his first hurricane in 1998. "I started with one type of severe weather and moved onto others."

Perhaps the most exclusive of these tours is headed by Vero Beach, Fla., resident Richard Horodner, who says there are very few true hurricane chasers. He bills himself as the "most experienced and oldest hurricane chaser still alive."

These new guys, Horodner said, "eagerly hunt TV trucks so as to get interviewed, love to take pictures of themselves grandstanding instead of the storm itself, have no respect for the science. ..."

Hill called Horodner one of the biggest showboats around. Horodner regularly criticizes others and promotes himself on online news groups, Hill said. "Any other hurricane chaser has absolutely no respect for this guy at all," he said.

Horodner's extensive hurricane chasing resume, however, would suggest otherwise.

It starts in childhood, when four hurricanes passed over his house in a period of several years and lists just about every storm that has hit the South since, including Katrina. Most of his income comes from taping and selling video footage of hurricanes.

Horodner has two spots for passengers a year and says he has only taken producers filming storms for TV shows. One woman approached him recently about going on a safari, but after talking with her, Horodner decided he did not want to be cooped up with her for days.

Bemoaning the commercialization of the industry, Horodner wondered out loud whether he should shut down his Web site that advertises his trips at $3,000 to $4,000.

"The negative attention they get," he said, "only shrinks the respect the scientific community gives to our generations of endeavor and public service."

[HurricaneHunter914]

Okay so is there a point to making this safari?

[gatorcane]

you got to be kidding me.

SAFARI cancelled when CAT 4 Hurricane Florence is beelining towards the state

[windycity]

Wow, and to think i thought iv heard it all.

[MiamiensisWx]

Why did the paper even publish this article?

[MiamiensisWx]

This is just like a Carl Hiaasen novel in Florida.

[gatorcane]

I'll take first dibs at opening a safari location "theme park" in my backyard here in Boca Raton and charge $100K for the cost it will take to repair my roof

[HurricaneHunter914]

Who wants to pay that much money to watch a hurricane when they can just drive down to the landfall area and not pay a single penny, except for gas.

[MiamiensisWx]

Charge them $300 billion dollars to repair a single roof.

Hurricane Hunter 914, why would they even WANT to do this?

[HURAKAN]

There is a Spanish saying that says, "if from the sky lemons are falling, make lemonade."

Which fits exactly to the fact that since we have been having so many hurricanes over the past few years, people just found a new way of making money by using what Mother Nature is trowing a them!

It's kind of cruel, but that's how humans have survived over thousands of years. Work with whatever you have

[MiamiensisWx]

There is a Spanish saying that says, "if from the sky lemons are falling, make lemonade."

Which fits exactly to the fact that since we have been having so many hurricanes over the past few years, people just found a new way of making money by using what Mother Nature is trowing a them!

It's kind of cruel, but that's how humans have survived over thousands of years. Work with whatever you have

OK. I'll just show them what stupid tourists they are.

[Ixolib]

Why did the paper even publish this article?

Human interest stuff, I guess. it came from the ContraCosta Times, situated in the S.F. and Oakland Bay Area.

[MiamiensisWx]

I hope you don't like it, Ixolib. Do you agree?

[HurricaneHunter914]

Charge them $300 billion dollars to repair a single roof.

Hurricane Hunter 914, why would they even WANT to do this?

There are alot of thrill chasers in this world. Like when an officer tells you at a national park not to take pictures of a bull, some idiot takes a picture for the hell of it and soon gets gored by one for the thrill.

[MiamiensisWx]

If they come into southern Florida, I'll smack them good.

[HURAKAN]

What about tornado tourism? Is it right to have a tornado tourism and not a hurricane tourism? What about volcano tourism in Hawaii?

Where some money can be earned, humans are there!

I think inside of each of us there is something that makes us want to see and experience in some form these powerful forces of Nature. It's like, why do you watch a scary movie if you know you will be scared? Do we like and/or need that feeling of being scared?

The psychology of the human mind is very complicated.

[hurricanetrack]

Ok, let me throw my two cents in:

I created HurricaneLiveNet.com for the purpose of streaming live video, with audio at times, of my crew's hurricane missions. As most of you probably know, we go in and set up wind instruments and other equipment to try to record data during landfalls. We also document via video what the effects and aftermath are. For the last two years, I have produced a season re-cap DVD that chronicles our work during the previous season. This has been a very successful business, I must say. And, we contribute to the science by collecting weather data and taking video of unique events, such as our best work to date: the Everglades City storm surge video during Wilma. We did all of this WITHOUT people in harm's way. Yet I made money doing so- it is my job. In fact, anyone on the planet with an Internet connection and the cost of a meal at Outback could watch, and hear, our goings on for the entire season. It worked far better than I could have expected and we are now expanding it big time.

So- my question is this:

Is there an inherent problem with taking "tourists" in to the paths of hurricanes because of the word "tourist"?

I took thousands of people in to the paths of Katrina, Ophelia, Rita and Wilma- right in the comfort of their home/office. The only difference is, THEY were at no risk at all of being hurt. I was certainly in some dangerous situations, but not nearly as much as I might be if I were trying to show paying customers who were in my van the worst the hurricane had to offer. I can do this using technology and reach a worldwide audience. I wonder if what I am doing has the same undertone of "tourism" that packing people in to a van does?

Your thoughts?

[MiamiensisWx]

If it is like that, Sandy, then it MAY be OK; however, if it is going to be like the sentence below, THEN I will hate it.

After it passes, the tourists wander around to see the damage. Storm chasing protocol dictates that it is in poor taste to boast about one's experience in what one chaser described as "mixed company." In other words: Don't talk about the great hurricane you just witnessed next to a native who just lost his home.

THAT type of "hurricane safari" and attitude would be cruel to the extreme.

[gatorcane]

What about tornado tourism? Is it right to have a tornado tourism and not a

hurricane tourism? What about volcano tourism in Hawaii?

Where some money can be earned, humans are there!

I think inside of each of us there is something that makes us want to see and experience in some form these powerful forces of Nature. It's like, why do you watch an scary movie if you know you will be scared? Do we like and/or need that feeling of being scared?

The psychology of the human mind is very complicated.

I agree, most people on this board are in areas that are at high-risk of hurricanes which shows that there is a part of them that wants to experience it, otherwise most people would be in non at-risk areas just watching from the sidelines.

[gatorcane]

What about tornado tourism? Is it right to have a tornado tourism and not a

hurricane tourism? What about volcano tourism in Hawaii?

Where some money can be earned, humans are there!

I think inside of each of us there is something that makes us want to see and experience in some form these powerful forces of Nature. It's like, why do you watch an scary movie if you know you will be scared? Do we like and/or need that feeling of being scared?

The psychology of the human mind is very complicated.

I agree, most people on this board are in areas that are at high-risk of hurricanes which shows that there is a part of them that wants to experience it, otherwise most people would be in non at-risk areas just watching from the sidelines.