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I produce a lot of special programming at my television station. While my daily job is to oversee our nightly newscasts, a job that keeps me in the newsroom, my real love is being in the control room, in charge of our coverage of a live event. During the preparation for those sorts of programs, I make notes, lots of notes, some on the computer, but most on scraps of paper with one of my many Sharpies. And then when the program is over, I gather up every note, along with every script, every memo, every scrap of paper and tuck them into a folder, just in case I ever produce a similar special again.
In my drawer, there is a big hurricane folder, there is a “Stadium Implosion” folder, a “Mayoral Inauguration” folder, a “Playoffs Preview Special” folder.
Next week I am going to going into another folder, a folder that will be used for the 4th time in less than a year.
It is the one with the red Sharpie title “Cop Funeral.”
On Tuesday, I will sit in the control room and produce our live coverage of yet another funeral for a Philadelphia Police Officer, killed in the line of duty.
This time it was Officer Patrick McDonald.
Two weeks ago (yes, two weeks ago) the folder came out for the funeral of Officer Isabel Nazario (I was off that week, another producer used the folder). In May, I produced the coverage of the funeral for Sergeant Steven Liczbinski. Back in November it was the funeral of Officer Charles Cassidy.
Enough, already.
Officer McDonald was shot 7 times on Tuesday by a guy who was already wanted for assaulting police, a guy who had been in prison, a guy who by all accounts was a bad guy in prison. Officer McDonald was shot 7 times by a guy who got out of prison LAST MONTH. The guy made it one month living in our civilized society before opening fire on a police officer who apparently asked to see his ID.
Earlier this month Officer Nazario was involved in the pursuit of a suspect when that suspect t-boned her cruiser. She was killed.
In May, Sergeant Liczbinski was trying to arrest suspects in the robbery of a bank in a supermarket. As he exited his cruiser, one of those men opened fire with a rifle. He was killed.
In October, Officer Cassidy was making his daily rounds, checking up on a business that had been robbed in the past. He didn’t know that it was being robbed at that very moment. He walked in, the robber shot him. He was killed.
Since I have been on the job at my station, 15 years, there have been 18 line of duty deaths in the Philadelphia Police Department. Each of those stories is worthy of detail, but I only go into these recent four because they all happened within the past year.
I don’t understand.
I can’t imagine what is going on in the mind of a person who, choosing a life of crime, knowing they’re doing something illegal, knowing that they are breaking the rules of a society, decides that killing anyone, let alone a man or woman who has dedicated a life to helping others, is an option.
I don’t understand.
I do know, though, that I want to put that folder in the drawer, in the back of the drawer, and never have to open it again.
Sentiment is not my first feeling. Sarcasm, cynicism, smart-assedness, those are my personality traits.
But tonight I have to express my sentiment to the men and women who are trying to keep my city safe and free and livable. I don’t know how they do it every day, how they keep from going, “Fuck this shit, these people, this job,” but they do.
And I thank them.
And if it happens again, I will be in that control room, making sure this city sees the heartbreak and the pain and at the same time, the honor, the tradition and the respect.
But I don’t want to.
I know you can hardly wait… so here is part 2 of the Gustav Journal. And this is where the storm rolls in. Oooh, it’s exciting!
MONDAY
5:15am – After sleeping with the sound of strong winds and rain outside, I hear the air conditioner in my room shutoff, meaning power is out.
8:00 – Meet crew in dark hotel lobby, get a cup of coffee and hit the road. Word is that the nearby town of Houma is being targeted so we decide to head in that direction, after first making stop along the Morgan City seawall.
9:00 – On road to to Houma, winds and rain begin to rage. Trees are down, and we’re in the only vehicle on the road.
9:45 – In Houma, we watch wind blow roofs off of buildings, down trees and send debris flying. Reporter records on camera piece in safe location when a gust of wind lifts her off of her feet. I dive and grab her legs for a clip of video that goes on air.
11:30 – After driving through Houma, we find closed shopping mall and pull car into its walk-in entrance which gives us shelter on three sides and over our heads. We are able to stand outside and watch northwest eye of hurricane blow through town.
Noon – Reporter gives live phone report to Noon newscast, while we stand in shelter of shopping mall.
12:10 – Decide to get the hell out of Houma.
12:30 – Drive out of Houma ranks up there as one of the scariest endeavors of my life. Roads that were bad coming in are impassible going out. We drive over downed wires, go the wrong way on one way roads and at times don’t take roads at all. The highway back to Morgan City is covered with branches and trees. There are no other cars.
1:15 – Get to Morgan City and take a nap in hot, muggy air conditioner-less room.
2:15 – Get back in car to find satellite truck now parked at Morgan City City Hall.
2:30 – Find truck and begin to write and edit piece for 5pm newscast.
4:00 – During editing process, editing machine stops working because of moisture. We feed unfinished piece to station for them to finish. Begin writing piece for 6pm newscast.
4:55 – With reporter in front of camera, video feed to station fails because of storm. Instead of live shot, reporter calls newscast on the phone.
5:05 – Re-establish video feed and begin feeding raw audio and video back to station for editors there to put together.
5:15 – Machine used to feed videotape fails and chews up videotape in process.
6:00 – Video feed fails again, reporter phones in live report.
6:05 – I curse and stomp my feet and curse some more, have a cigarette, and curse.
8:00 – Attempt to call station, but cellphone reception is gone.
We spend the evening writing a taped piece for our 11:00 newscast, feed it, and return to Morgan City Holiday Inn. Photographer decides to shower, reporter and I are too tired and wait until the morning.
TUESDAY
8:00 – Wake up to shower, only to find there is no water, because of tornado that hit sewage plant. To figure out what the plan is for the day, I reach for cell phone, but reception is still gone. I jump in car, and drive up the main street in Morgan City and find a working pay phone. Make call to the station, make plan for the day, and decide to enjoy not being able to call or receive calls for foreseeable future.
8:45 – Gas up car with one of the gas cans that we have been carrying on the roof. Four gallons go into tank, One gallon goes down the front of my pants.
8:50 – Change clothes.
9:30 – Go to City Hall to talk to Morgan City officials. Begin interview when camera fails because of moisture. While photographer tries to fix camera, I drive around looking for more damage. Find one gas station that is still open, get gas, curse previous effort to gas up using gas cans.
9:50 – Camera comes back to life.
We spend morning in Morgan City, talking to people who are cleaning up and find a mobile home that looks like it exploded. One family’s belongings are lying out in the open, next to other mobile homes that were unscathed.
1:00 – Head to location of satellite truck.
1:02 – Discover satellite truck is not there any more.
1:02:30 – Say “Hmm.”
1:03 – Start heading to other side of town to find Morgan City’s one working pay phone, along the way, see satellite truck. Truck operator tells us he’s headed to Houma, and we can meet him there.
1:04 – Hit the road to Houma. There’s no place like Houma.
2:00 – Arrive in Houma, shoot video of damage there, and then search for bathrooms.
2:30 – Fine members of Louisiana State Police Troop C allow us to use their bathrooms. I wash my hands and face with running water.
2:40 – We park near satellite trucks for other network, figuring we’ll at least see our sat truck when it arrives in town. I see phone booth nearby, get excited, until I realize it’s a booth, but no phone.
3:20 – We think it’s odd that we haven’t seen our satellite truck. I knock on door of other network’s truck and ask if I can use its satellite phone. After the requisite “how much is it worth” jokes, I call station, ask them to call other station which owns live truck to find out where said truck is.
3:30 – Call back station, find out that sat truck might be near the intersection of Rt. 24 and Rt. 312.
3:31 – Ask local for directions, he doesn’t know.
3:32 – Type intersection into rental car GPS and follow blue arrow.
3:38 – GPS, named Marla by reporter, declares we have reached destination. Holy crap, there’s the truck.
4:00 – Feed every bit of videotape to station.
5:00 – Do first live shot without any sort of equipment failure.
5:05 – Find loaf of bread in back of car, wedged under cooler, make sandwich with a new form of flatbread.
6:00 – Accomplish live shot, with only minor equipment failure, system that allows reporter to hear anchor in her ear stop working. Instead I make contact with station and relay information to reporter with handsignals.
6:04 – Leave Houma.
6:20 – All cellphones in car beep at the same time as reception is restored.
7:00 – Return to Morgan City, and hear exciting new that water works, not to drink, but to bathe and operate “facilities.”
7:15 – Reporter and I go to gas station and attempt to bribe owner for beer. Attempt fails.
8:00 – Power comes back on.
8:00:10 – Reporter texts from her room “Yay!”
8:00:11 – Set my room air conditioner to “Meat Locker.”
8:30 – Confirm flight home originating in New Orleans. Travel office says we’re good to go.
8:35 – Hear on television that New Orleans airport will be closed until Thursday.
9:00 – After two operators and 25 minutes on the phone, I reschedule our trip home through Houston.
9:01 – Attempt to wind down for night.
I have lots of things to write about… but first, I have some catching up to do.
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I was supposed to go on vacation, but got diverted instead to the Mother Of All Hurricanes.
Gustav didn’t quite live up to its expectations, but for me it was still a fun trip. I’ve been to 5 hurricanes now, and this was the first one in which I got to go through the eye-wall.
Covering a hurricane is a make-it-up-as-you-go experience. And I kept a journal. It’s rather long, so I’m going to break this up over a couple of posts.
Enjoy.
SATURDAY
Early afternoon – Station decides to go to New Orleans to cover the expected arrival of Hurricane Gustav, and asks me to go as the onsite producer.
3:00pm – Reporter and photographer are also selected, I make travel arrangements to fly from Philadelphia to New Orleans via Atlanta on American Airlines.
4:00pm – Start packing, shop for last minute supplies, cancel planned vacation to Canada.
8:00pm – Get call from travel division, flight changed to Continental Airlines, through Houston.
SUNDAY
7:00am – Wake Up and head to station.
9:00am – Shuttle takes photographer and me to airport where we meet reporter.
11:00am – Flight leaves for Houston.
Noonish – Flight attendants serve hot cheeseburgers and sodas, don’t charge for them like every other airline in the world, making Continental my favorite airline of all time.
1:15pm – Arrive in Houston, and decide we cannot get into New Orleans and get needed supplies. We tell Continental, my favorite airline of all time, and they somehow get our luggage off of the New Orleans flight and into our hands. They do it smiling and they refuse generous tips for pulling off the impossible. Continental is now, simply, the greatest American air carrier. (They don’t serve airline sushi though, so they aren’t quite number one worldwide)
2:15pm – Get on road from Houston to… well, we aren’t sure just yet. We head east with a destination to be determined. During the drive we find a Walmart, there are many of them in Texas, and buy loads of food, a cooler, cases of water, towels and toilet paper. Never forget toilet paper on trips like this. You just never know.
5:00 – On road in passenger seat, I make calls to our sister stations with satellite trucks in the region, figure out where those trucks are stationed, and based on those locations, and predictions made, not by meteorologists but photographers who have covered many hurricanes, we choose the town of Morgan City, Louisiana as our destination. It is about 4 hours away.
6:00 – Station calls, asks us to do a live shot for 11pm newscast. We expect to arrive in Morgan City at 10:30.
8:00 – After trying several locations, we finally find a store that has not run out of gasoline cans. We buy 4 5 gallon cans, fill them up, and strap them to the roof of our minivan using a very complex system of bungie cords. I remember that I never have really figured out how to strap them down and feel confident about them.
9:00 – Approaching Lafayette, La. we drive through the first band of storms associated with Gustav. The rain and wind are shockingly strong and a tornado watch is posted.
10:00 – Speak to photographer from sister station in Morgan City, ask him to find rooms for us.
10:15 – Rooms confirmed at Morgan City Holiday Inn.
10:30 – Find Morgan City Holiday Inn where satellite truck is stationed.
10:50 – Reporter prepares story. I check in to the Morgan City Holiday Inn. If you are ever in Morgan City, stay there, tell them John sent you. They are wonderful people.
11:00pm – Reporter does liveshot after having been on location for 30 minutes.
11:30 – Batten down the hatches and go to bed.
Forget all of that lovely stuff about the calm of Canada.
I’m heading south instead to New Orleans and will spend my Labor Day with Gustav.
I am sure I will have plenty to write about from there.
Time will tell whether this is a good thing or not, but I am now able to blog from my iPhone. No longer will I have to expend the energy required to pick up and turn on my laptop. Now, I need only to use my thumbs and 2 to 3 calories an hour.
The only thing better would be a personal stenographer who could follow me around, or even better, sit at my bedside and transcribe my blog, while also feeding me grapes and pouring wine into my mouth.
But I digress.
Radar Magazine (I’d make a link but that appears to be more than the iPhone can handle) is publishing it’s “Worst Colleges” list in it’s September issue. I got a sneak peak of it today and I recommend it simply because I believe in supporting people, writers and publications with a sense of humor.
The article makes fun of a college in my city, and that institution is outraged. At my workplace we wanted to do a story on the story and the reaction. This was before we read the article.
When we first heard about it, we were suprised. You see, no one told us it was HUMOR.
I contacted the Senior Editor in charge of the piece and explained the situation. He emailed me a copy of the article, but not before giving a statement in response to the college’s outrage.
For silly professional ethics I won’t reprint that statement here, but to paraphrase, it was basically “lighten the hell up and enjoy the joke.” That is not what people usually say when my station confronts them. I was beginning to think the college was worked up over nothing.
That was confirmed once we read the story. We laughed, a little at the absurdity, a little more by the amusing truths.
We got the joke and decided not to even bother with our story.
I do recommend the article though, especially if you have a friend from Cornell… even better if the friend is female. Any college review that includes the line “sweet release of death” is a winner.
What isn’t a winner is typing this much on a mini glass iPhone keyboard.
But I’m just too tired to roll over to the laptop on the far side of my bed.
By the way, thanks to the Radar Magazine people for being helpful, upfront, and not taking themselves too seriously today.
It’s clear that I’m not going to be a father myself anytime soon.
That’s why I have completely glommed on to my friend C’s pregnancy. She’s due any day now, and I am set bring that baby into this life.
If it happens here at work, I’ll boil the water and sterilize towels, all necessary things that I saw on an episode of Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman. Then after I perform the delivery, I’ll hold the newborn over my head and introduce it to the world. (I know the gender but C doesn’t want it known yet).
And if there is time to get her to the hospital, I’m ready for that too. There are several routes from here to there, and I’m listening to the traffic reports. I have a double-secret backup route too. I don’t want to tell her about it because it seems like it might be in the wrong direction, but trust me, it will get us there.
Of course, I am not going into this blindly. She is keeping me up to date on her condition. I know she’s three centimeters dilated. I also know how the doctor measured the dilation. Today she passed her mucus plug. I know that because I asked her.
I figure if I can talk to her about mucus plugs, then I am inner-circle enough to yell “Push! I can see the head! Ok, one more big push! Here it comes”
I also think the baby should be named after me, but she isn’t quite sold on that.
We did it!
Congratulations to the people of my fine city. Last night we reached an exciting milestone: 100 murders!
And it’s not even April yet.
It took a lot for us to get here, of course.
When I was a young boy, playing on the streets here, there would be the occasional fight. We did it the sissy way, though. There would be punching, wrestling, yelling and then someone would run home in tears.
Then the next day, all would be forgotten. We’d play in the streets again, and the two people who had been slapping each other would most likely be on the same team, no memory of why there were fisticuffs the day before.
And then in school, boy did we drop the ball. Sometimes guys would “challenge” each other to a fight in the playground. The other guys would gather around and watch, take sides, make lunchroom bets on who was going to win.
As we got older, those classroom disagreements would lead to payback in the athletic arenas. There would be a little extra oomph during tackling drills in football, maybe a dirty shot on the ice in hockey, and then, like with the street fights, all would be forgiven later in the locker room.
Nowadays though, people get right to the point.
Forget the fighting. Let’s just kill each other.
What, in my day, would be an animated argument, now turns into a shoot out.
In school, kids don’t resort to more tradition means of anger management, they pop a cap into each others asses.
And then there are the witnesses, the honorable witnesses, the ones who wouldn’t dare damage their own or anyone else’s street cred.
No snitchen’!
Amen, that’s the way to keep our murderous streak alive.
It takes a lot for a city with the 6th largest population in the country to have more murders than any other American city. New York has more than 4 times as many people as this city, but we’re kicking their asses! L.A., Chicago, you call yourselves cities? HAH. I spit on your lack of deadly violence.
We’re so good at it, we share the fun with the uninvolved. Kids, mothers, little old ladies, don’t worry, just because you aren’t packing heat, selling drugs, or giving dirty looks, you still have a good chance of taking part in the killing, of course, by being on the receiving end.
See, we’re generous here. Our shooters aren’t stingy with bullets or aim, they fire enough lead to share.
Fuck you Detroit, our people love the killin’ and we’re making sure we’re the best.
Apparently there are some workplace scenes that, while normal here in a television newsroom, aren’t so commonplace in the rest of the world.
Last night I was reading the details of Anna Nicole’s autopsy out loud.
It included lines like: “The anus is unremarkable,” “the vagina is normally wrinkled and contains no foreign matter,” and “there is a deep seated abscess on the left buttock with a creamy, yellow-green pus.”
This was our dinner break entertainment. I was eating a sandwich, one coworker, P, was standing behind me slurping down a bowl of salty miso soup, and another, W, was chomping on sushi.
“The implants were surrounded by a thick connective tissue with a clear thick yellow fluid.”
Slurp.
“The abdominal cavity is lined with glistening serosa.”
Chomp.
There was a visitor who watched us from across the room with a look of true disgust on her face.
What do the rest of you talk about when you eat?
I sort of want to write about this woman with whom I’m completely smitten, but I’m not quite there yet… there being that place where I can write everything about myself here where everyone can read it.
And because I’m not there, I know I have at times been a little boring.
Just wait until you read this one. It’s about parking cars!
_____________________________________
There was a scene in the opening montage of a 70s cop drama that showed a dozen or so cruisers pulling out of the police station lot, in perfect unison.
Here at my workplace the parking lot here is divided into two levels. The bottom is covered, and those 12 spots go to the highest level bosses here. The rest of us park up top, in the open. Normally, that’s fine, maybe even better, because our spots are actually closer to the door.
But, on a night like this, being outside sucks.
Our city is being pelted by little ice balls. So far there are several inches on the ground, and on our cars. It’s just crappy.
At 6:30, when the daysiders left, they all had a good 15 minutes of scraping before they could actually pull out of the lot. From the windows, it sort of looked like the string section of a symphony, as they all moved their scrapers back and forth, back and forth.
We weren’t just watching for fun, though. We were waiting for the all clear, and shortly after 7pm, we got it.
There are about 15 of us who work here in the evening. And while there are fewer than 15 official spots under the cover in our lot, we are a resourceful bunch. We also look out for each other.
One by one, like the open of that TV show, we pulled out of the upper lot and filled into the lower area. The lines dividing the spaces are unimportant. What matters is that we make room for as many cars as possible. Since we had only been at work for a few hours so far, we didn’t have as much scraping to do, so we spent a few minutes clearing the icy crap, and then our cars got to spend the rest of the evening in executive luxury.
It’s a bonding experience.
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