WASHINGTON - Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Chertoff warned Allegheny County Commissioner Dan Onorato and City of Pittsburgh Mayor Bob O’Connor in a conference call today that Western Pennsylvania risks a major calamity should the region sustain additional Steeler or Steeler-related stories from any of the three local network television affiliates. “Local utility companies have informed our office that the amount of Steeler information absorbed by their lines over the past three months cannot be sustained much longer” said Chertoff. "The lines are almost completely saturated. At any moment, large segments of the viewing area likely will begin experiencing rolling black-outs, and rolling black-and-gold-outs. Viewers in many areas will also experience explosions as appliances try, to no avail, to process additional Steeler stories. So we need to warn everyone to stand away from their radios and televisions when the local news is being broadcast.”
Dave Corbett, a spokesman for Comcast, the region's largest cable service provider, said that his company's cable lines transmitting Steeler-related information into area homes "simply can't handle anymore." The cable lines were installed during the early to mid-eighties when “the team wasn’t very good," Corbett explained. "They didn’t even make the playoffs a couple of years, so the lines weren't built for this kind of inundation.”
Corbett conceded that he is concerned about local reaction should Steeler information become unavailable for an extended period of time. “I don’t think this region has ever experienced the kind of suffering we would endure if we had to go days, or even weeks, without knowing how Jerome Bettis is enjoying retirement, or how Hines Ward celebrated his birthday. You'd have to take the Johnstown Flood, the Blizzard of 1993, and the Murphy Administration – and multiply it by ten.”
To that end, Onorato has asked the President to Federalize the Pennsylvania National Guard in the event troops are required to maintain civic order.
Coming up a little later on this web site, we’ll tell you how the State Gaming Commission is planning on awarding a casino license to a certain Steeler coach in an effort to keep him from moving to a certain new house in North Carolina.
