Fire and Ice

The last few weeks have proven to me that mother nature can steal the spotlight at a moments notice sometimes. One week we are covering grass fires that span thousands of acres and the next we are doing live shots in 14 degree weather with all of Abilene iced over. Everyday is a gamble in Texas when it comes to the weather.

I love the opportunity to do live shots - I can be more creative and it's normally the type of news that is much more pressing. At the grass fires in Hawley we set up and did live cut ins into the national programming all afternoon. Homes were being evacuated as the fire took barns and houses in the Big Country. Fires were still smoldering behind us and literally yards from where we stood for the shots the charred ground was still hot from the blaze. If you kicked the ash a cloud of hot embers would fly up from the ground as if it was still burning under there. It was an eerie thing to shoot.

THEN... a week later the entire KRBC/KTAB news team was out for what seemed like 3 days straight for the Abilene ice storm. One KTAB reporter, Katherine Lane and I had a 2 night "sleep over" because the drive home for her was too dangerous to traverse. With only what she had on her back she had to unexpectedly stay and report 3 days in the Abilene area. From the moment the weather hit we were live until late that night (for 3 days). Andrew started the day with live shots for the daybreak news and we were cutting in with updates from the newsroom all day, then going live for the 5, 6 and 10 o'clocks. We were broken down and back at the station by 11 and all heading home for a few hours of sleep and what seemed like the greatest shower of my life before we were out on the road again reporting the school closures and road conditions at 5AM.

I was out with Priscilla Luong and Tim Johnston doing lives from the bridge at I-20 and Arnold Blvd. It was at most 14 degrees at our location before the sun came up and not much above that after. We would dart back in forth from the news van trying to warm up between shoots. Unfortunately during one of those darts one of us hit the automatic locks and suddenly... we were locked out of the news van... Haha! It was unreal. Our temperature reading on out satellite clock said only "LO" refusing to report a temp while we were locked out of the van for an hour. That was an awkward call to make... I had to notify the assignments editor that we had a little situation and among the chaos going on at the station and everyone reporting on something they had to find time to come rescue us. Andrew got there as fast as he could with a spare key. We jogged in place... did jumping jacks... and a variety of other things that we thought would either make us feel warmer or get some strange looks from the folks driving by...which we did. I'll treasure the memory. It was a crazy few days. Cold weather will take it out of you!