I remember getting red slurry on my watch band while covering this story.
There was no going live by satellite from a street corner dressed in "go to meetin' clothes" like you see now, or looking down from a lofty perch in a "fly bird".
We got down and dirty.
We told stories about how all the firefighters were provisioned (hot & cold meals, tents, water, ice cold watermelon) in an area where two days earlier there was nobody. We told the stories of how trucks of food and water and supplies from Albuquerque were ordered to the scene. Hot kitchens and refrigerated holding trucks. The US Forest Service does a magnificent job of logistics in these instances. People come from all over - and they just seem to appear from out of nowhere. You won't see such stories on TV news now, they're too busy looking good or "going live".
It was a great time, we all learned a lot, probably took a few too many silly chances - but it was worth it - and I think the public was served by the information we provided.
2 comments:
I spent the last quarter of the 20th century (1971 - 1999) fighting forest fires. That was the common term in use then. I was on fire assignment in every western state plus 6 or 7 east of the Mississippi. Ninety percent of the assignments were on the fire line, never on an "engine, helicopter or air tanker".
In that whole time I saw news folks on the fireline only once, that was on the Coconino National Forest just outside of Flagstaff on a fire called the Turkey Hunter Fire in late November back in the mid 1970's. At the time I could not imagine what they were doing there.
Now they seem to be in camp or around the engines, helicopters, air tankers all of the time. You still do not see anything of the firefighters with the hand tools. They are too far away and you would have to walk to get to them.
But for the news agencies the fire engine is right there on the road, the helicopter and air tanker you can see from a distance.
I sometimes het embarassed by their reporting. But that was a different time.
Yes it was!
Post a Comment