Thursday, May 03, 2007

I Reek Of Smoke

I'm sitting at home, it's midnight and I've been given a new set of rules in my house.

"If you cover a fire, when you get home you must take off all of your clothes and put them in dirty clothes. Don't set them on the floor. Do not lay down on the couch. Walk directly to the bedroom and take your clothes off. Otherwise everything will smell like a campfire."

This from my lovely wife after she got home and walked over to her smelling-like-a-campfire husband laying on the couch.

"Oh." I reply. Even though I'm thinking "I know. I just felt like laying down right when I got home...and the Simpsons were on."

Anyway, I've been shooting news for about a dozen years and I've never gotten any good fire video. Granted, I know that getting 'good' fire video means I'm capitalizing on someone else's tragedy. Someone loses a home or a business and I'm there with my camera to cover the story.

But if I'm going to cover a fire, it would be nice to have a real fire to shoot. Usually the video I get is of firemen rolling up their hoses, firemen drinking Gatorade, firemen carrying ladders and equipment back to their trucks. You get the idea.

In the past 10 days I have stumbled upon two roaring structure fires on my drive home from work. I mean the fully-involved, flames rolling into the sky kind of fires.

Tonight I had made a turn on the main road that takes me home from the freeway. A fire engine with full lights and sires went blasting past me. I assumed they were responding to an accident about a mile up in the next intersection where accidents happen all the time.

As I got closer I saw a huge cloud of smoke drift across the road. I pulled over, grabbed my camera and ran into the apartment complex. As I meandered my way through the several emergency vehicles, I came upon this scene:

This building was burning like a torch. Not one of those dopey torches they crafted on the island in 'Lost' but one of those torches they chased Frankenstein's monster around with in 'Young Frankenstein'.

No one knows how it started but there were no fire breaks in the roof so it spread to all the apartments in this building. The wind was blowing embers around the smoke blew close to the ground making visibility low for everyone.

I ran back and forth near this building getting various shots of the fire being fought, of emergency lights blinking in the smoke and people taking their own pictures of the fire. Luckily no one was injured. Everyone in the building evacuated safely.

Being as close as I was to this inerno, I absorbed quite a bit of the smell of the fire in my clothes and hair prompting that conversation with Erica. The overnight photographer showed up to start his shift so I handed over my tape to him. The fire was mostly out by then and I was ready to go to bed anyway so I headed the half mile down the road to my house.


By the time the editors got ahold of the video back at the station, they didn't use the best shots (I'm not quite sure why they chose the shots they did) but the story can be viewed here:

Apartment Fire Video


These photos I used are from the Deseret News and Salt Lake Tribune newspapers.

4 Comments:

At 11:37 PM, Blogger Ryan said...

Man, what's up with all the big fires lately? I read about the guy who tried to kill himself by fire, but just ended up blowing up his house and then walking away. Crazy.

 
At 3:00 PM, Blogger Pules said...

Oh I have a story about that, too.

Stay tuned for more...

 
At 2:40 PM, Blogger Lisa said...

Mark--where the bloody hell have you been??? I keep thinking you've disappeared completely! Email me.

luckystar AT cdadirect DOT com

 
At 2:45 PM, Blogger Lisa said...

Holy cow! Just checked Erica's blog--sounds like you have a whole field full of good reasons to be not blogging! That is awful about her job; heartbreaking. BUT!!! Congratulations on the baby!!! That's awesome. Babies are so great. I'll reiterate: email me. NOW. :)

 

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