You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.
Not feeling safe while doing your job.
NEWS is a four letter word and sometimes it’s a dicey proposition.
News filters into the newsroom that a tornado has touched down in Northern Alabama. Facts are more sketchy than a Ponzi scheme in Africa.
“Just go all ready!”
Those are the salty words that fill my ears from a co-worker who has never once left the building to engage the unknown.
The news beast must be fed and this man is consumed by that goal. He orders us to the edge and we go. It’s what we do.
And so it begins.
My partner and I are heading south on I-65. Dark clouds are swirling just above the interstate. I point my camera at the sky and wonder if they are forming into a funnel.
“That’s scary,” my photographer will say.
He’s right. There is a crackle of lightning that goes sideways, like we are on a strange planet on Jupiter.
It is ominous and the feeling unsure.
As the grey turns to dark, we drive on.
We cross the Alabama state line.
I roll down the window. Even at highway speed the air is soupy, full of energy, alive with something evil.
We talk. We listen to music. We make small talk. But the feeling of what’s next is ripe in the air.
Roughly 90 minutes later, we get to Athens, Alabama and head west.
The road is wet, but no signs of damage. The Exxon is illuminated. So is the auto parts store.
Then, like someone turned off a light switch, everything goes dark.
No lights. Houses dark. No street lights. Trees broken. Metal signs bet over.
A few miles later we see the swirling blue and white police lights of the 1st of several check points.
Cars are backed up. There is no discernible line. There is chaos as vehicles try to merge, to pass, to turn around.
We are caught in this rip tide of uncertainty.
You can tell there is frustration, fear in the air.
People need to get somewhere to check on something and this barricade manned by state police is slowing it all down.
We are antsy too.
It’s 8:30 pm. 90 minutes till air and we have yet to shoot a frame of video.
We get to the check point.
The trooper leans his head into our news car.
I expect him to give us grief.
He tells us wires are down everywhere and some might be hot.
“Be careful.”
I almost wish he had more words of warning.
The road ahead is desolate. It’s a moonscape littered with limbs and debris from homes that have torn away.
There are wires on the road and there are wires that are draped across the road, held up by who knows what.
It’s dark and the lights of the car don’t illuminate nearly enough highway.
“This is not safe,” my partner says.
He will say this at least 3 more times as we proceed ahead.
We get to our 2nd check point.
There are two confirmed deaths in a trailer park. Media is reportedly gathering at some school nearby.
It’s all word of mouth. Nobody has a plan. The winds are swirling in the darkness. The rain is pelting us. The blue lights are swirling and the night is uneasy as a caged tiger.
We get to the 2nd checkpoint. There are less cars and we drive up to the waiting trooper. He is covered in plastic, rain dripping off his hat.
“You can’t get any further on this road,” the trooper says. “It’s impassable. You’ll blow your tires.”
He directs us off the main highway onto a country road. He suggests we go up and around and maybe double back.
I look at the clock.
There’s no time for this darkened wild goose chase.
The side road is a disaster. it’s filled with debris and parts of houses and nails and wires. We swerve back and forth avoiding what we can see.
Our news vehicle crunches a variety of other obstacles we don’t see in time.
Suddenly there is a cluster of emergency lights in the distance.
Blue lights attract news people like chum brings a shark.
We pull over on a dark stretch of asphalt that I will come to learn is Quinn Road.
The blue lights are up ahead.
A deputy stops us. “Nobody is dead. Homes are leveled. People are missing pets.”
Suddenly a woman in a car blurts out that her home is destroyed and her dog is gone.
We follow her and listen for yips of a small dog.
“Twinkie! Twinkie!”
The woman rushes to a mound of wood and broken furniture.
“Twinkie, where are you?”
“Did you lose your dog mam?”
“Yes Twinkie. He’s buried in the debris.”
We listen and hear the tiny yelps of a dog.
It’s dark and the little barks for help seem to be coming from everywhere.
“Oh my God, he’s a live,” the woman says.
She is wearing a tank top and shorts. She is covered with dirt and she is sopping wet.
She is walking on top of what was once her roof. I see furniture and carpet and dishes and the remnants of a home blown to bits.
It is pitch black. The footing is treacherous, filled with deep holes that would snap an ankle. I avoid what I think are turned up nails and wires that I hope are not alive with death.
The only light is being supplied by my partner who is following the women who are in now in tears.
I look down and I am standing on a carpet. It suddenly dawns on me that a few hours ago, this was the woman’s living room.
maybe she was watching TV. Maybe cooking dinner. Maybe playing with Twinkie.
Now? Life’s Crazy.
Now? I can’t tell the house from the field from a puddle of mud.
I listen for the dog’s yelp.
All I hear is the spew of water racing out of two water mains that are now attached to air in the foundation.
“I’m glad you made it out alive,” I say to an older woman also looking for pets.
She tells me how her children were injured, blown out of their home and found in a field under a couch.
I am amazed. All this is unfolding before me. It’s almost too much to comprehend. 90 minutes of just getting to this place. Then in the span of 2 minutes, the pain and anguish and cries for help from 3 families compressing my head like an emotional vice.
My photographer wants to help. I sense he wants to put down his camera and start ripping two by fours away from the devastation and find the dog.
I stare helplessly at the scene and my watch, knowing that ten o’clock doesn’t care.
All this has happened in a short period of time in the dark in a cul-de-sac destroyed by an evil vortex cloud that still seems to be lurking.
Life blinks, and life changes.
Suddenly, I hear a bark from the distance.
The woman screams, “It’s Twinkie.”
My camera man follows behind with his light.
I am suddenly trapped in this debris pile in the dark.
I cannot see 3 feet in either direction.
I am trying to remember if there is a hole to the left or right of me. Was that roof full of exposed nails, I wonder. Is that dark object under the water a rope? a hose? Is it the homes’ electrical wire? Is it live?
Oh my.
This is a very bad place to be.
There is no safety here. There is no direction or guidance here? The blue lights are a block away. The camera light is now in a field looking under debris for Twinkie.
I am frozen in this spot.
I am the soldier in the mine field afraid to take a step for fear of blowing up.
I am not safe in this pile of debris. I wait a moment. I think. What should I do.
Tick Tock.
Ten O’Clock doesn’t care.
So I make my best guess where the safest foot hold is and step. I stop and feel the inside of my boot.
Nothing hurts. I am relieved. I take another step in what appears to be a clear spot.
One step after another. I begin walking back to the road.
At least I can see the road. It is the hard surface being pelted with relentless rain. At least on the road I can differentiate between nails and wires and pieces of house.
Just then, my partner arrives with his camera light.
With it comes a feeling of security, like a comforter on a cold night.
I dip my watch into the light. It’s 9:15pm.
“45 minutes dude. We gotta go.”
“They haven’t found the dog,” he says. “I really want that.”
I know what he wants. It would be great to get that reunited moment.
But there’s no time.
We have unbelievable problems still to over come.
My camera man jumps in the back seat and fires up his TVU.
This is a portable back pack that relies on cell pone technology to send back pictures and sound.
It’s primal and works when it feels like working. Conditions have to be just right and nothing about this night has been right.
“Not enough signal,” He says with a sense of doom on his face.
I look at him. I look at the houses destroyed. I look at the blue lights swirling ahead.
“We gotta go.”
“Where?”
“Back. To the check point. To Nashville. Anywhere we can get a signal. We got gold in your camera and we have to get it back to the station.”
He isn’t thrilled, but he doesn’t disagree.
“You drive,” he says.
I begin the arduous trek back. It’s crazy. It’s like driving in a prehistoric world where dinosaurs have punched holes in the dirt and electrical snakes dangle from invisible trees.
All around us lightning tears across the sky. The air is shaking, almost pulsing with anger.
We get to the nearest checkpoint.
My cameraman is in the back working like a demon, talking to master control.
“Still no good,” he says.
I look at my watch. It’s 9:25 pm.
Ten O’Clock doesn’t care.
I decide to head to the lights, where it all began. I start driving back to Athens, back to civilization.
I get to an auto parts store. The lights are on.
We pull into the parking lot.
My camera man is on the phone and he gives me a thumbs up.
“What?”
“They’re getting it.”
He sends it back. He sends it all back. The woman who lost her dog. The mom who found her kids. The man carrying the third of his 4 lost cats in a blanket.
I call the producer. She sounds like she has been run over by a truck.
“Everything is going wrong,” she says.
I feel like asking her if she put her life on the line. I feel like asking her if she is wet or if the electrical components of her desk threatened to kill her without warning.
I don’t. It’s not her fault she is an inside person. She doesn’t know what it’s like. None of them do. They have phones that work and computers that turn on and dry rooves over their heads. When their bladders are full, they empty them.
They are inside people. We are the hunter gatherers. We club the news and drag it back to the cave.
I think about what we have just gone through. I feel the tension building in my chest like a dam swelling with too much water. I realize that every mile of this night we were driving on the precipice of tragedy.
My photographer told me at least three times he didn’t feel safe. I didn’t tell him that, but I thought it plenty.
Especially standing on top a house, wires and nails exposed, in the dark, like a land mine that had yet to explode.
I tell the producer what we are sending back. We don’t have time to edit in the field. I suggest the editors find a 30 second chunk of our best stuff and put it together and I’ll live toss to it.
“OK,” she says.
We have 18 minutes till air.
“Let’s go back to the checkpoint,” he says from the back seat.
“What!”
I look at him like he’s crazy.
He’s right. We can’t talk about Quinn Road from an auto parts store.
“Air filters $19.99?”
Jesus Christ!
I turn back onto highway 72 and head into the desolation.
It’s 10 minutes till 10. We are still driving. I feel like I am driving on a dangerous dark treadmill.
Finally, I see blue lights. I pull to the side of the road and we begin throwing equipment onto a nearby driveway.
I quickly tell the troopers what we are doing.
They have so much on their plate. We are the last of their problems.
The man gives me a “Don’t get killed” kind of look.
If I wasn’t so stressed, I would laugh.
5 minutes till air.
The lights are up. The camera is hooked up to the TVU and the signal, unbelievably is usable.
I breathe my first sigh of relief since the co-worker in the news room rudely told me to go into the elements and put my life on the line. Something I am certain he will never do and has never done.
Soon I am on air. I feel the blue lights pounding the back of my neck as the check point looms ominously behind me.
I talk about where I have been and hard it was to get there.
As I listen to myself talk, I realize how dangerous a trek this has been. If I was home watching in the comfort of my warm house, or a dry safe newsroom, I would suddenly think to myself, “holy Crap” that is crazy.
I toss to a segment of the video that I have not seen and will not choose.
I will later come to realize it is not the best. We had gold in our camera, and for whatever reason, the editors chose rust to put on the air.
That’s not something I can control.
I end by saying two are dead and the extent of the devastation won’t be known for some time.
“Clear.”
And with that, it’s over.
We are in Alabama. 2 people are dead. Homes are destroyed. Animals are missing.
Clear. It’s that simple.
Our Nashville news leaders don’t need any more news from us in Alabama. No more live hits. No more stories to tell.
Was Twinkie found? I will never know.
I’m shocked we are bailing.
It’s like winning a chance to go to the Superbowl and then only playing the 1st quarter.
But honestly, I no longer care.
If we leave right now, there is a good chance I won’t die.
If we leave right now, there is a good chance by 12:30 I’ll be home in my own bed, with a roof over my head and not missing any pets.
I’m sorry for the loss of the people I have just met.
News is like this. It introduces you to tragedy, forces you to intersect with the unknown.
Clear.
If the station has had enough, then who am I to argue.
As we pack up the sopping wet equipment and pack it into a sopping wet news vehicle, I’m reminded that my job is dangerous and the only people who really care about my safety are me and my camera man.
Tomorrow it will be another news day.
News is a four letter word.
I’ll be rested and ready.
Bring it.
I’ll once again be a news hunter gatherer and dance with the demons that indiscriminately blow apart lives.
Life’s Crazy™