ACCEPTING VOLUNTEERS TO THE DESTRUCTION
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Following the destructive path of Hurricane Katrina, our newsroom, like many others in the BELO family which owns several stations around the country, made a call to arms for volunteers to help assist the folks working out of WWL, our sister station in New Orleans. They had been on the air 24-hours a day, were tired, and had to tend to their own personal losses. Coming from "hurricane" country, I felt it was my duty to help our brothers and sisters in their time of need, because who knows, one day they may have to come help us.
Flying to Baton Rouge via Cincinnati was seamless, aside from checking far too many bags for three people. The small plane to Baton Rouge forced me to check in my camera and later seeing the baggage handlers dropping and dragging it across the tarmac made me cringe.
Once in the airport, we attempted to contact the newsroom at WWL to no avail as cell phone connections fluctuated. When we finally got a voice on the other end I explained who we were and where we were.
"Ok...write these coordinates down."
Puzzled, I began writing down lattitudes and longitudes. I stopped the voice for a moment. "Umm...why do we need this?"
"It will all make sense later," the voice assured me.
I got it all down and then realized they didn't understand who we were. I explained our situation once more.
"Oh...you're not the helicopter?"
"No...we just arrived at the airport from Virginia and we need a ride to the station."
"Oh...ok...we'll tell someone."
We ended up loading into cabs and made our way to the "war room," based out of the Louisiana Public Broadcasting Station in Baton Rouge. They quickly introduced themselves, many who knew and grew up with my reporter, Wayne Carter. Then we were sent out the door to relieve the crew at the Louisiana State Police barracks who were covering press conferences at the operations center.
While packing up my gear, I realized my camera had a problem. It would not open nor shut where you fed the tape into the body. This made it impossible to shoot anything. Thank you baggage handlers.
I told Wayne my dilemma and raced inside to find an engineer while he headed to the barracks. After explaining the situation, a group of engineers from different stations gathered around, tore it down and put it back together in record time. I later told Wayne, it never worked so good.
I got a ride to the barracks with a photographer from Portland; an ongoing theme would be meeting fellow peers from around the country. We made our way into the small room where the briefings and updates would take place and I bumped into Rev. Jesse Jackson on his way out. I glanced at Wayne in disbelief, him nodding and acknowledging, when a marine standing guard smiled and said "he ain't nobody."
We covered the updates from rescue officials and the Governor. Bouncing between the live truck from KVUE in Austin and the conference room, fatigue from my twenty-hour day was setting in, but I kept telling myself it was nothing compared to what these people had been through. I've been through hurricanes. I could empathize.
The KVUE satellite truck operators brought a smile to our faces with their kindness and planning. They had tents set up around the truck with air conditioners in them along with all the proper gear of any tailgate: refrigerator, microwave, coolers, hot plates, and even a blender...and of course more water than one could imagine. At the end of the day, while waiting for our ride to our lodgings, he appeared out of nowhere with hot wings. They really took good care of us with unmatched hospitality.
It was a hot first day in Louisiana, but as I would learn from Wayne, it's always hot in Louisiana.
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