You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.™
Chasing storms all day long in a region of the country that is being savaged by abhorrent, evil weather.
Tuesday night I went to bed with the sounds of our weather anchor tracking scary, cartoon-like, lines of death from city to city. I said a prayer to God that if a tornado should come and tear off my roof, like a can of sardines, to eject me into a soft pile of compost.
I fall asleep and awake to a roof and quiet. I turn on the TV and what do I hear? Our 10pm weather caster is still talking. It’s now 6:30 am. She’s still tracking storms. She has not gone home or gone to sleep. She is a meterological zombie.
Holy crap.
Weather events like this are crack to people in the weather business. They take bong hits off the national weather service forecasts and they crackle with energy, like a microwave full of metal, every time there is a new tornado warning,
I dress and quickly go through my list of contacts. I soon hear about a house fire 50 miles to the south.
It’s 7:30 am and I hit the road. Officials say it’s probable that an angry vortex cloud fired a lightning bolt across the sky and it hit the mansion’s roof.
Blam.
The 6,000 square foot structure erupts into flames.
The home is on a hill, in a fashionable neighborhood filled with million dollar homes. It is apparently owned by a prominent doctor.
It takes about an hour to get there.
I pull up and fire trucks line the street. Lights are flashing. People are slowly walking through the labyrynth of emergency vehicles. I look at the sky and the clouds are swirling angrily again.
I walk to the mansion across a football sized front yard. A few firefighters I know say hello.
Anyone hurt I ask.
No, comes the response.
Sad about the fire, but no injuries seriously diminishes the story. It’s a fact, if it bleeds it leads and my 20 plus years of news experience is suddenly telling me that something extraordinary better have happened here to catapult this story into the lead.
Just then a man with grimy hands and a sneer on his face approaches me. He is young and his face covered in hair. The scraggle of beard covers his clenched teeth and obvious contempt.
“No No No.” he shouts. “Turn that camera off. Get out of here.”
“I’m with the news,” I begin to say. “I’m sorry for what happened here…”
Before I can explain what I am doing, he throws me off the property.
“You gotta go,” he says pointing to the street hundreds of yards away. “this is private property.”
I think about trying to change his mind, but his stare is icy and angry and if someone asks you to leave private property, you leave.
So I trek down the long driveway and begin setting up on a public street. There are fire trucks around me and fire fighters rolling up hoses.
I zoom into the front of the house. It’s hard to tell what is going on.
Suddenly thru my viewfinder I see the familiar face of the angry man approaching. He is leaning forward, he is seething.
“I thought I told you to turn that camera off,” he hollers hovering around me like a buzzard circling road kill.
I am getting pissed. But I realize this man is a victim. I remain calm.
“I respected your request to leave the property. But this is a public street sir, and I have a job to do.”
“I don’t care. We don’t need this on the news. I don’t want this house recorded, you understand.” He is pejorative, talking down to me like I’m some sort of shoe shine boy in Port-au-Prince.
“You can bring it up with my boss,” I say politely, “but I’m here and I have a job to do. I am talking to fire fighters and anyone I can from the street. This is a story”
“I don’t want you to turn on that camera,” He says again stepping closer.
I wonder if he is going to hit me. If he does, I would be surprised, but not shocked.
“It’s all ready on,” I say.
He inches closer. “Well then you can hear what I am saying.”
“Yeah I can and I am going to do my job. If you want to talk to my boss, then go ahead.”
“You can call him right now,” he demands.
To appease this angry man I call the station and talk to the assignment desk. I speak loudly and clearly so the man can hear me. The camera is still rolling.
“This man is requesting we don’t shoot the house,” I say to the desk. “I am on a public street. I have been respectful. It’s a million dollar home struck by lightning. I think it is a story. I told him to talk to the boss.”
I hang up and say I have brought it to the attention of the newsroom.
“Yeah well I’m gonna call him. He doesn’t know who he’s messing with. He doesn’t know who we are.”
With that he turns and walks away.
I go to work, interviewing the fire chief who proceeds to tell me how hard a fire this was to fight. He mentions how big the house is and how rough the storm was while they were fighting this inferno.
I interview 3 neighbors who heard the thunder and saw the lightning.
It sounded like a war zone, thunder clapping they say from on top of this hill in this prominent neighborhood.
Suddenly my phone goes off. It’s the assignment desk.
The woman on the other end says the boss says we aren’t going to run the story.
What?
I ask to talk to him. He’s in a meeting, comes the reply.
I’m heading back to the station, I respond.
An hour later, I’m seated at my desk. I have a full memory card and I’m not sure what to do with it.
That’s when the boss walks into my office and asks me who this guy was. I say I don’t know.
He tells me the guy called and left an angry message on his answering machine.
He asks me if the fire is a story. I say I think the fact the fire is storm related and the fact that the fire fighters had to go through so much to save the home is worth a short story.
He says OK, but don’t show the house.
I laugh to myself. How am I going to tell a story about a million dollar home struck by lightning and not show the house? Every time I say the firefighters rushed into the home, the lightning hit the roof, the blaze consumed the back half of the residence, the family was lucky to escape the blaze, what am I going to show? A hose lying on the ground?
As I sit there mulling that possibility, the phone at my desk rings.
It’s the assignment desk.
“We need you to go to Clarksville.”
That’s 50 miles in the other direction.
“What now?”
“The river is threatening to over flow its banks. They are letting the schools out early in case the roads flood.
I hang up the phone and laugh. It’s 10:30am. I’ve been chasing news for 3 hours, I have shot 45 minutes of video and I have nothing to show for it.
I get in the news car with a photog with 30 years in the business. He is angrier than normal on this morning. Apparently his storm morning has gone like my storm morning.
He tells me that news is like ducks nibbling on you. One nibble doesn’t hurt, but thousands of nibbles over years and years becomes excruciating.
He doesn’t want to cover his umpteenth flood. Like a Christmas ham left in the oven way too long, he is done, he is cooked, he has had enough.
I look at him as I get on the phone to the public information officer for the school system. I wonder if I am looking at myself.
Nah.
The public information officer gets on the phone and begins telling me about early dismissal for safety reasons. The idea is to keep 30,000 kids safe.
For some reason, the idiot at the mansion is a memory. Now I’m onto a new adventure. I feel that buzz that I always feel when I’m about to engage a story.
Suddenly I am now the adrenalized weather caster free basing news.
I imagine this is the same buzz that Han Solo feels every time he engages the Warp drive of the Millennium Falcon.
Hours later I will be live at the river. I am being pelted by ferocious rain the size of Hershey Kisses. For some reason, there is a crowd of people watching, scared that the river is going to overflow its banks and repeat the atrocity of last year’s May Floods.
I am cold and wet but happy. I know this is a story and nobody tells me it’s not.
And it’s crazy.™