Fatal Fire

I never got to go to sleep last night. I got called into work before I could even try.

Greg got into town around 1:30 and my assignment editor called at 2:30 asking me to work the a.m. shift. The scheduled reporter called in sick and the person on call never picked up their phone. What can you do?

I did the standard live shots between 5 and 6:30 at the jail. Police arrested a woman for allegedly killing her grandmother. Pleasant.

Victor, the Sunrise photographer, and I were just about to take our break at 7 when the desk called to tell us there was a house fire in Bath county with reports of two children unaccounted for.

By the time the day was over a 12 and 13 year old girl were dead. Their mother, father and 15 year old sister were in the hospital with serious burns and their 11 year old brother was with other family, lucky he got out unhurt.

It was a very tough story. It is awful when people die in fires because it is something that should be prevented, but accidents happen. It's stories like that you have to be extra conscious of what's going around you. You have to be extra sensitive. I thought we did a pretty good job. There were a lot of family and friends coming up to the scene asking who had died, wondering who got out. All the reporters on the scene kept their distance. It wasn't appropriate to interrupt when these people were still trying to figure out who died.

It didn't stop us from getting yelled at. After standing outside for awhile, a Kentucky State Police Trooper came over to give us official sound about what was happening. It wasn't the most sensitive interview. We're just trying to get the facts about what happened, where and when. It's probably not something a family member of the victims should witness. On this day, they did.

After we were finished, a man walked up and started yelling at the group of us. Telling us we should be ashamed of ourselves. What if it were our sisters who died in the fire? He "understood" we had a job to do, but all we were out for was to get a story. I asked him if he would like to say something to remember the young girls, he declined, continue to scold us and walked away. I wasn't nervous about it until the State Trooper stepped next to me just in case. Of course he was wrong. If everyone who was there could have been somewhere else, we would be. The last thing we want to be part of is the death of two young girls.

After it was all over, I felt so bad for whoever that family member was. It's not uncommon for reporters to get yelled at. People want us off their property, stop shooting their homes, etc. Usually we just tell them we're on public property, keep shooting and don't think twice. This was different. He wasn't yelling at us because of us, he was yelling at us out of grief for his family. We just happened to be standing there to be his punching bags. That was fine. I'm not going to take it personally and if that man felt a little better about his tragedy by taking it out on me with a few angry words, then I was glad I could offer him some comfort.