You could say an act of God brought meteorologist John Gumm to WKRC-TV, where he’s been living his dream of forecasting in his hometown.
Twenty years ago, Gumm was on the air for 12 consecutive hours at New Orleans’ WWL-TV warning viewers about the potentially deadly massive hurricane heading up the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday, Aug. 27. The storm killed nearly 1,400 people.
Gumm left the airwaves after his wife, Jennifer, went into labor at 9:30 p.m. with their first child. He drove to the hospital and never returned to WWL-TV. Gumm took his young family first to safety in Nashville, Tennessee, then to Jennifer’s parents’ home in Bloomington, Indiana, and applied for a weather opening at Channel 12.
“Hurricane Katrina changed so many lives. It was such a dark time. But out of that dark time came so many good stories too. What it taught me is that when things look bleak, dark, and hopeless, there is always hope and there is always light,” he says.
“I knew God’s plan was something I wouldn’t be able to understand, but I just trusted in him and trusted it would all work out. All that said, if I could trade the experience I’ve had in living my dream — working in my hometown and raising my kids where I was raised — for the storm never happening at all, I would do that in a heartbeat. We lost almost 2,000 people on my watch as a meteorologist, and that’s something I’ll never heal from for the rest of my life,” he says.
Gumm had dreamed of being a meteorologist since grade school. As a sixth grader at Brantner Elementary School in Mount Carmel, he wrote a class paper about wanting to become a meteorologist and someday help save a large city from a horrible hurricane. He had that chance at WWL-TV after working for stations in Rock Island, Illinois, and New Bern, North Carolina.
The 1993 Glen Este High School graduate came on New Orleans’ Channel 4 about 10 a.m. that Saturday as Katrina churned larger and larger. He told WWL-TV viewers that Katrina was going to be the worst-case scenario for the city of New Orleans, and urged them to evacuate.
“It was the most important work I’ve ever done in my life — telling people to get out of town that Saturday,” he says.
The forecasts were accurate. New Orleans was in the bull’s eye for the Category 5 hurricane. Eighty percent of the city flooded. (The initial death toll of nearly 1,800 was revised downward two years ago to nearly 1,400 after a new analysis of death reports, NPR reports.)
“My faith in God has always been strong, and leading up to that storm, I asked him for guidance. At a time when many people were panicking or petrified from fear, I was very calm and knew exactly what I needed to do. So I had extreme clarity before the storm, during the storm, and even after the storm,” says Gumm, who was named Channel 12 chief meteorologist after the death of Tim Hedrick in 2016. Today he lives in Northern Kentucky with Jennifer; daughter Macy, a senior at Villa Madonna High School; and Connor, a sophomore at Xavier University.
Connor Jacob Gumm was born at 3:20 a.m. Sunday, Aug. 28. In his first photo with his son and wife, Gumm is still wearing the blue necktie he wore all day on TV. He’s recounted the story for Sinclair Broadcast Group’s National Weather Desk feature, which will air Friday on Channel 12.
Gumm first drove the family through heavy rain in Mississippi and Alabama to relatives in Nashville. Along the way, Gumm changed his first diaper in the back of an SUV. After they got to Indiana, Gumm heard about a weather opening on Hedrick’s staff at Channel 12 and asked out of his new three-year contract with WWL.
“It was a tough job to leave — a great station that was the dominant No. 1 back then. But Jennifer didn’t want to return,” he says. He went back in late September to their rental home in Slidell, Louisianna, which escaped the storm surge. However, the roof damage from a falling tree made it uninhabitable.
“We were lucky. We lost a little furniture, but escaped unscathed,” he says. Gumm also found his sixth-grade essay from Brantner Elementary School.
“The storm surge had stopped a few blocks south of our house. But I’ll never forget that smell. I’ll never forget the damage I saw driving back to our home. The (area) was unrecognizable, especially where the hurricane had flattened buildings.
“Most of the people I worked with at that station lost everything. They continued to work through the storm, earning a Peabody Award for their excellent coverage,” he says.
While in Indiana, Gumm got a call from Channel 12 weekend weatherman Jude Redfield saying he was leaving WKRC-TV for Indianapolis. He gave Gumm telephone numbers for Hedrick and News Director Elbert Tucker. They offered Gumm the job. He debuted on Oct. 26 with news anchors Dave Burchell and Dayna Eubanks.
Twenty years later, Gumm remains haunted by Katrina.
“I know I couldn’t save them all. But could I have convinced the governor of Louisiana to have a better plan before the storm happened? Could I have convinced the mayor of New Orleans to have a system in place to transport our most vulnerable citizens who didn’t have transportation or means of evacuating on their own out of harm’s way beforehand? These are things that constantly go through my mind.”
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