FIRE!

I usually despise breaking news.

"Ohmigosh! There's a mugging downtown! GO!"
"A woman was bit by a dog! Get out the door!"
"Holy crap! A shack is on fire in the middle of nowhere! What are you still doing here? Don't forget the live truck!

Yeah, these events are bad things, but most of the time there is nothing there. Most of the time nothing really exciting happens. The mugging was a fist fight. The woman was nicked in the hand by her own dog. She's got a scratch. The fire? It burnt a hole in the carpet.

It gets old. Very old. It makes even the most seasoned photographer wonder what the hell he or she is doing in this business.

But tonight was different. Tonight I feel proud to be in news. Tonight I am proud of our quick response to a huge story.

At about five o'clock tonight, the state caught on fire. I'm not exaggerating. A front moved in with HUGE winds. The humidity dropped quickly and everything was dry. There were six or seven grass fires, within 30 miles of town, covering acres and acres of land. Entire communities were evacuated. People lost their livestock, their pets, their homes.

We had crews everywhere. My reporter and I left at 6. We went about 30 miles out of town. We interviewed evacuees. We got fire video. We put up a live shot. We edited a package. We did 3 live hits... Our SAT truck operator met us at the scene. He uplinked our stuff to the network, got stringer video sent back, and without him we couldn't have done everything. At 9:15 we were on the air. We rushed everywhere to get all that we could.

But it wasn't just our team. Everyone involved kicked ass. Almost all of our photographers came in to help. Our News director and an extra producer came in as well. We had crews out all over the place. We rented a helicopter and sent a photog up there. The entire hour show was about the fires. When we got new information it was almost instantly on the air. It felt good to be helping people. It felt good to give them information they needed. It felt good to do breaking news.

We weren't trying to scare them into watching. We weren't covering another shooting. We were telling them about something that actually effected them.

I wish we could do that all the time.
*note: we found out as we were leaving our location that the police believe the fires in the area we covered were actually intentionally started. Officials can't even estimate how much damage there was tonight. The fire jumped roads, killed livestock and destroyed homes. Why would someone intentionally cause all this damage? It saddens and angers me.