The Only List of Those Who Died During Hurricane Sandy

You probably won’t believe this either. but with all the news about Hurricane Sandy there wasn’t a definitive list of those who died. When tragedy occurs, newspapers usually rush to create a list as a tribute to those that were lost. This time nothing. Everyone was so busy reporting the loss of land and housing that no one from the news media took the time to really focus on everyone who perished. Some speculate that most newspapers today do not have the money to spend on true investigative reporting. Most of the stories we read everyday are either aggregated or are blurbs about a particular topic. Sometimes I can’t believe a story suddenly comes to a close. I hate the words, “If you want more information on this topic, click here.” Boo hoo!

It deeply saddened my daughter Whitney that the people who died were not being remembered. She stopped everything that she was working on and spent a few days researching who died, where they lived, the cause, and other pertinent information. Whitney is a whiz on the Internet so she was able to unearth a lot and what she couldn’t find she extracted from police, fire, government and legal files. She got so caught up in the investigation she barely ate or slept until the job was completed. She took the investigation as far as she could and then posted on Pleasure and Pain, her blog.

Whitney has a huge following so it naturally went viral, but she didn’t expect the few surprises she got. One is that families are now calling her to help them find loved ones and secondly, major outlets are reposting her blog piece. New York Magazine, called her late last week to tell her they were going to use the story and with their resources, try to did a little deeper. Below is what they printed in this week’s edition. The story appears on the front page of the Intelligencer column, page 7. They devoted an entire page to the subject and gave her total credit.

Whitney’s career is now devoted to “empathy” in business. If you follow her tweets and blog posts you will read her thoughts about how important it is for companies today to be empathetic in order to build strong foundations. There is a whole science behind this thinking and I am not the one to spell it out.

Since she told me about her concentration a few months ago, I am seeing more and more books and articles on this subject. So will you. Whitney is very sensitive about the New York magazine piece as well as the others that picked up her blog post. She is not proud that she was smart enough to get it to go viral. She is very intent that the memory of the victims of Hurricane Sandy be preserved.

Below is the article. To see it online click here.