Chasing catastrophe, p.19
Chasing Catastrophe, page 19
The officer manning the machine stopped him.
“Do you have a weapon in your bag?” he asked.
Sean, who does have a permit to carry handguns, was smart enough not to bring one with him.
“No, of course not!” he later told me he told the guy.
They ran his bag through again, and the officer told him he’d need to take a closer look, and he did, and he pulled out the bayonet.
“OH MY GOD!” Sean exclaimed. “I completely forgot that was in there!”
He then told the officer the backstory, and they may have had a laugh about it, and security held the bayonet for him while he interviewed Jeb and gave it back to him on his way out.
CHAPTER 8
HURRICANE HUNTER
I chased and covered dozens of hurricanes over the past three-plus decades, and the story of each storm is different. The experiences could be exciting, even exhilarating, usually exhausting, and frequently completely frustrating.
I was rarely the only reporter sent to cover a storm (it happened just once that I can recall, in Bermuda, detailed below). I’d be a part of “team coverage,” and it was the bureau chiefs and upper management who decided whom to put where, often positioning crews over several states with hundreds of miles between them.
If we were “lucky” enough to be assigned to the storm’s landfall location as the hurricane approached, we were in for one of the most exciting and frightening rides of our lives.
Countless hours of pounding rain, howling winds, and moments of sheer terror, followed by long and usually hot days of finding the worst damages and stepping carefully through the debris to report on what the fierce winds and violent downpours had done to the residents of that particular community.
More often than not, we wound up at a location outside the impact zone, sometimes virtually untouched by the storm. We’d still have our live responsibilities, going on TV every hour or two to talk about preparations for potential disasters, but we’d be fifty or a hundred miles or more from where the hurricane was actually going to hit, which meant it might be sunny days and clear nights and maybe just some rain in our area, while up or down the coast people were getting slammed and we were missing it.
It was like being sent to cover a murder trial and reporting on it from the wrong courthouse.
We didn’t want to be safe and dry. We wanted to be at the edge of danger and soaking wet, but once you committed to a location with a killer storm system barreling toward shore, you usually had to stay there until the worst weather passed, because once conditions started deteriorating, it was simply too unsafe and, in some cases, impossible to drive, because of the conditions you’d encounter along the way.
It was always a big debate where to go, weighing the best guesses of the National Hurricane Center, the National Weather Service, our own Fox Weather Team, history of past storms, our gut instincts, and the positioning of other crews.
If the most likely destination of a particular hurricane was Tybee Island, Georgia, but the network already had three reporters there, we’d have to go somewhere else north or south that was also in the cone of probability, like Savannah or Charleston or Jacksonville Beach. And while what was happening in those cities mattered, including the storm preps and evacuations and cautionary sound bites from officials, it just wasn’t as good a story if we wound up safe and dry while another area was getting walloped.
I always pushed for the most likely “ground zero” for the main event. Sometimes I got sent where I wanted, more often I had to go where they told me, and most of the time we’d have to scramble once the worst of the weather passed to make it to the hardest-hit areas so we could at least be front and center for the second part of the story, which was the aftermath and cleanup. It wasn’t always about putting the best reporter in the most likely landfall location, since, as with everything else, politics would play a role. If a major storm was headed for Miami, for example, the correspondents in the Miami bureau would be front and center. I could get sent down to work a less desirable shift, like overnights, or report for Fox News Edge, the affiliate news service, doing lives for local stations across the country interested in hurricane updates, or I’d get sent to the next-closest spot in the cone of probability, usually at least forty or fifty miles away.
I remember one time fighting to go to one particular beach town and losing the argument with the Atlanta bureau chief, who left the network not long after that. She wanted us somewhere else, and we begrudgingly went there, and when she realized she’d been wrong’ and we’d been right, she told us to go there as the storm was rolling in, and I tried to control my anger as I explained to her that we needed to do that hours earlier when we first pushed to move, and now it was simply too late. It was highly dangerous and just plain stupid to try to drive hundreds of miles in bad weather, and it was irresponsible of her to ask. We couldn’t and wouldn’t do it. We were stuck where we were until after the storm, when travel was still challenging, hazardous, and slow because of downed power lines, washouts, and the debris littering and blocking many roads.
Following are some of my biggest hurricane experiences and some of the most memorable, compelling, and bizarre moments from those trips.
HUGO, 1989
MY FIRST STORM
There have been many “holy shit” moments in my reporting career, as in “What the fuck am I doing here? Am I gonna die?” type moments. The first of these actual life-threatening experiences was in Charleston, South Carolina, the night of September 22, 1989, when Hurricane Hugo slammed into the Carolina coast.
I was twenty-nine years old, working as a freelance reporter for WPTV-TV Channel 5, the dominant NBC affiliate in West Palm Beach, Florida. My cameraman and I were dispatched a few days before the storm to cover preps on the ground and be in position when the monster made impact. I’d never covered a hurricane before, so I had no idea what was in store for me, but I was about to be tested in ways that would challenge my strength and resolve and prepare me for the countless catastrophic moments I’d face over the next thirty-plus years.
Hugo was a beast—at its peak, a Category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson, one of the most powerful Atlantic hurricanes in decades, and the costliest ever at the time, with an estimated $11 billion in damages (it would later be topped by other storms that I also got pounded by, including Andrew, Katrina, and Sandy).
Hugo’s direct effects devastated the homes, cars, and businesses of some two million people. It crushed nearly everything in its path, killing sixty-seven people, thirty-nine of them in the aftermath. The timber industry was among the hardest hit. South Carolina suffered over a billion dollars in lost inventory, with 95 percent of the trees knocked down in Charleston and several thousand more snapped, uprooted, or truncated ten to twenty-five feet above ground. It was heartbreaking to drive through the city and see the beautiful, stately old trees twisted and forced off their roots, crushing homes and vehicles and blocking roads, and to drive on the highways, with the pine forests that lined the roads now looking like fields of sharpened sticks pointing toward the sky, the greenery all but gone. And the destruction didn’t end there.
More than three thousand historic structures in Charleston were heavily damaged, some hundreds of years old. Some twenty thousand newer homes and businesses were also battered or obliterated by the high winds, pounding rains, and storm surge. Hundreds of boats that weren’t dry docked were tossed everywhere, on lawns and roads, upside down on top of homes, some carried a half mile from shore, most ruined beyond repair. Watercraft were everywhere they didn’t belong, and we started getting used to seeing fishing boats and speedboats and sailboats around every corner, upside down on a street or sitting in someone’s front yard.
The death toll wasn’t as high as it might’ve been because more than a quarter million people heeded the mandatory evacuation orders, but many of those who stayed behind later told us they regretted it, after suffering through the roughest ride of their lives, and hundreds of them were hurt in Hugo’s wake, trying to mend the mutilation.
In the days leading up to the storm, we filed reports on locals preparing for the worst by boarding up their homes and stores, stocking up on supplies, and packing their cars with their most precious belongings before fleeing to higher, safer ground further from the coast. We worked from early morning till late at night, getting very little if any sleep, running on pure adrenaline laced with increasing nervousness at the massive storm system headed right for us.
Watching the satellite images grow larger and seeing the projected path, a direct hit on Charleston, was an absolutely unnerving experience that I would repeat dozens of times in the years ahead.
At one point before landfall, Hugo was a Category 5, the most powerful on the Saffir-Simpson scale. By the time it hit Charleston, Hugo had downgraded slightly to a Category 4, but the beast packed winds of 140 miles per hour when it slammed the coast. My cameraman and I had already retreated to our motel about ten miles from the coast, along with dozens of other members of the media. The NBC affiliate satellite truck we were assigned to broadcast from was parked next to a porte cochere at the front lobby entrance, where we could stand with some protection from the driving rain.
We were sharing the truck and satellite space with reporters from other stations, so we had to wait our turn for our slot in that night’s 11 p.m. newscast. We were up third, with a five-minute window from 11:10 to 11:15 ET. Our station had one of the highest-rated local newscasts in the nation, commanding more than 50 percent of the viewers in the market every night, and I’d never been more excited for a live shot, especially considering that the conditions were deteriorating rapidly and we’d be able to “show and tell” just how nasty it was, reporting from the center of the storm with winds howling in the triple digits at our location.
Yet, the connection died, and I never made it on the air that night.
A REASON TO PRAY
It’s hard to describe just how gnarly things were, right before the truck lost its satellite signal. The rain was falling in heavy sheets, a rough, pounding downpour driven sideways by the howling winds that were well above one hundred miles per hour at our location. We could hear trees cracking all around us and the loud bangs of transformers exploding on utility poles. It was like a fireworks display on the Fourth of July, with thunderously loud bangs, and sparks cascading in all directions as the lights went out, block by block.
With trees shattering, the wind howling like a freight train, and the thick, sharp, painful rain slapping us in the face and soaking our bodies to the bone, my cameraman struggled mightily to keep his balance, hanging onto his tripod for dear life as other shooters held onto him to keep him from getting knocked down.
No one could help me stand because I was on camera, doing my best to brace myself against the gusts, one foot firmly planted in front of the other, leaning in, holding a stick microphone, and struggling to hear the producer and programming through the IFB in my ear. I knew this could be a pivotal moment in my young career, and I was ready to rock and roll in Hugo’s face.
And then, our shot was gone. The engineer came out of the truck, yelling to us over the thunderous weather that he’d lost the signal and there was no way it was coming back. He had to drop the dish and shut the truck down because things were getting so bad, and we knew we needed to seek shelter. The safest thing we could think to do was to gather our gear and try to make our way back to our room. That relatively short walk to the rear of the building was one of the most frightening experiences of my life.
It was the first time I truly thought I might die, and it was also the first time I prayed to God to spare my life.
Our motel was like one you’ve probably seen a thousand times, a big square two-story building with interior rooms facing a courtyard and exterior rooms facing the parking lot. The paths to the rooms were exposed to the elements, ringing the inside and outside of the building, with waist-high railings and peripheral staircases, also exposed to the unforgiving elements swirling around us. Our room was around the back, but there was a shortcut through the courtyard.
I got separated from my cameraman at some point as I made my way from the truck in front of the lobby toward the side of the building, now fully terrified as the winds continued to intensify, with stuff flying and breaking in all directions. I kept waiting for a branch or piece of roof or broken glass to hit me or cut me. I was on my own, survival of the fittest in a way I’d never had to endure before.
It was now about 11:30 p.m., just a half hour before the hurricane’s fierce winds would reach their peak. When I turned the corner, I was forced to hug the exterior brick wall of the motel, hands spread out, inching along at a snail’s pace, trusting that if I pressed up against the solid structure hard enough and made myself flat enough, I wouldn’t be blown away.
I was hearing the worst sounds I’d ever heard, ominous life-threatening, life-ending kinds of sounds. Glass breaking, debris flying, the wind howling at insane volume, stuff crashing all around me, the loudest, most evil kind of thundering weather you can imagine. I’d never considered myself religious, even when I was reading the Torah at my Bar Mitzvah. But now, at twenty-nine, in the heart of the most powerful force I’d ever encountered, I understood why and how people found God, or at least a reason to call His name.
At some point as I inched along the side of the building, a group of other journalists, probably the crew scheduled to follow our live shot from the same satellite truck, rushed by in a rugby scrum, shouting as they hustled past me like they were coming from a frat party. On instinct I jumped in behind them through the howling winds and driving rain until we reached the cut-through to the courtyard where conditions weren’t quite as bad.
At this point I was able to break away from the group but still found myself inching along, finding the interior staircase and making my way up the steps one at a time, finally reaching our room, where I found my photographer soaked but safe. We were physically unscathed but severely shaken, and conditions outside were only getting worse.
We put towels under the door to try to keep the water from soaking the carpet, waiting anxiously to see if the wind would blow out the rattling windows or rip down the walls. Sleep was impossible, even though we were both completely exhausted.
After a few more hours of howling and shaking, the noise subsided outside as the eye of the storm arrived. It was the calm center of the storm, and conditions improved dramatically. Everything got eerily quiet. Even the rain stopped, so we grabbed our gear and headed outside to survey the damages.
It was still dark, but we could see a graveyard of downed trees and broken glass everywhere, most of it from car windows smashed by flying debris. We made our way toward the front of the building and when we got there, we witnessed an incredible sight.
The motel had one of those enormous signs you could see from the highway, probably a hundred feet tall on two thick steel poles. It failed in the face of Hugo’s bullying gusts, plunging right through the roof of the lobby, which we were later told had just undergone a $1 million renovation. I have no idea what it cost to repair what got wrecked.
My cameraman and I collected whatever video we could and then hurried back to the room before the eye fully passed and the storm kicked back up again. After more than forty straight hours on alert and on duty, we both crashed hard, and neither of us thought to set some kind of alarm. This was before cell phones. We didn’t even have beepers.
With power and phone lines knocked out, we never got our scheduled early morning wake-up call, and no one from the truck came looking for us, and we slept right through the window for our 6 a.m. live shot and kept snoozing right through the rest of the three-hour morning show. We startled awake around nine, and I’ll never forget the sheepish trek to the truck, a true walk of shame, calling the station and finding out they thought we might be dead.
I’ve always been honest and ready to admit my mistakes, and I told the assignment desk exactly what had happened. Then I had to tell the news director, who wasn’t nearly as understanding.
He was really pissed that we’d missed our morning hits. It was a huge story, and even though we’d been there on the ground for days reporting Hugo’s every angle, and would stay to report on it for several days more, we weren’t on TV the early morning after, which was our job and probably when most people were tuning in to see what happened to Charleston.
It was our job to be up and on camera, and we’d failed our station at a crucial moment. The boss told me he was glad we were okay and that we’d talk about it when I got back.
HERE TODAY, GONE TOMORROW
That meeting happened the next week. I knew I was in trouble, of course, but I also naively expected him to thank me for risking my life, and for all the stellar reports we’d filed for every show from sunrise through the late news each day (except for the hit we couldn’t do during the storm, which wasn’t our fault, and the shots we slept through the next morning, which was).
He showed me no love in his office that morning. Instead, he gave me a hard, unforgiving stare, reprimanded me, and then said something to the effect of, “If you do anything like that again it’ll be the last day you work here.”
I bristled at the slight but kept my mouth shut because I didn’t want to lose the job, but just a few weeks later the news director at WSVN in Miami decided I was ready for prime time and offered me a higher-paying job in a much bigger market. Telling the guy in West Palm I was leaving for a better gig was one of the sweetest moments of my young career.
ANDREW, 1992
South Florida
Three years after Hugo, I found myself covering an even bigger storm named Andrew, which I’m convinced would have killed me, my crew, and hundreds or thousands of others had it remained on course and slammed into Fort Lauderdale, where we’d set up our cameras, working and waiting on the beach without a solid plan of escape.
