As guitars surge, so does the Stillaguamish River.
Water rages over a bridge in Granite Falls, while Tool plays Led Zeppelins No Quarter in the background. For almost two minutes, Richard Braytons home video surveys the rivers destructive path during the height of the Election Day flooding.
If the Snohomish cabinetmaker had recorded the video during the 1990 flood, he probably would have been the only person to view it. Instead, he and scores of other amateur videographers have posted flood footage on YouTube, a popular Internet video-sharing site.
The recent flooding was the first local disaster that residents shared with the outside world using video-sharing Web sites.
As of Monday afternoon, Brayton’s video had been viewed 75 times. Other YouTube flood videos taken last week in Snohomish County had been watched as many as 254 times.
YouTube’s collection of Election Day flood videos includes footage taken in cars being driven through flooded roads, views of trees rushing down rivers and first-person accounts of flooded basements and yards.
Posting videos of weather-related problems on YouTube was a regional phenomenon last week.
A man from Portland, Ore., posted a poem about the rain’s “sweet embrace,” and someone else posted footage of people walking through swamped streets in Tacoma. People as far north as British Columbia posted their flood footage on YouTube and Google Video.
Brayton said he was moved by “Mother Earth” to post what he saw.
“The immensity of the water moving through the canyon was just spectacular, and I wanted to share that with anyone who had interest in Granite Falls,” said Brayton, 51.
The South Fork Stillaguamish River for the most part is well-behaved, but it kicks loose when the water is high, Brayton said.
“To see it is just unbelievable, and I wanted to be able to share that,” he said.
Video-sharing sites have only been around for a year or two, but are already establishing themselves as an important outlet for disaster watchers and survivors, said Kirsten Foot, an associate professor in communication at the University of Washington.
The sites have also made headlines and gained followers in recent months.
Several controversial videos have been posted, including scathing political commercials and recent footage of Los Angeles police officers punching a man during an arrest. The FBI is looking into that incident.
Most of the best footage of the 2004 Southeast Asia tsunami was recorded by bystanders and posted on video-sharing sites.
YouTube, founded in February 2005, didn’t exist then, but many Internet videos depicting the disaster were replayed on television or mentioned in newspaper articles.
Homegrown disaster footage from Hurricane Katrina is not as common, probably because survivors didn’t have Internet access for weeks or months after the disaster, Foot said.
Even after Sept. 11, 2001 – years before video-sharing technology became commonplace – home videos of the terrorist attacks were posted on private Web sites and on photo-sharing sites with limited video capabilities.
“It gives people a place to connect and to express themselves,” said Foot, who this year co-wrote “Web Campaigning,” a book about the intersection of politics and the Internet. “I think there’s a strong need when people have gone through something traumatic to share their experiences and put out what they saw and went through.”
Gary Randall, 48 of Brightwood, Ore., thinks his YouTube contributions have historic importance. Randall recently posted flood footage of a washed-out road and a neighboring home teetering over the rushing Sandy River in northwestern Oregon.
“This is something those in the future will be glad I documented,” said Randall, a graphic artist and amateur historian.
“I feel I kind of do a lot of it for anyone who might come across my work in the future. Being a historian, I feel real fortunate when I come across someone else’s photography of an event that has happened in the past. … It’s history in the making, so to say.”
As for Brayton, his foray into the YouTube universe was an experiment. He’s not pleased with the quality of his video, which he shot on a digital camera.
Nonetheless, he enjoyed shooting the footage and pairing it on his computer with the Tool track.
If he gets better equipment, the river could very well rock again.
Reporter Kaitlin Manry: 425-339-3292 or kmanry@heraldnet.com.
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