The Dangers of Working in TV News

It may seem like a simple job one does working in television news, but let me tell you, there are a lot of dangers. You can sometimes roll up on crime scenes that are not always safe. You sometimes run into people who you never know what they will do. You also work with heavy, unpredictable equipment. Today photographer Josh Fabbie and I faced off with option number three: heavy and unpredictable equipment.
I was filling in for our Sunrise shift and it was a pretty active Monday. A house fire was called out just before 4 a.m., the minute I walked in the door, and by 4:30 we were on scene and hustling to get a 5 a.m. live report on the air. We got interviews with the home owner, the fire chief and did two more live reports. By 6:15 we were starting to wind down for the day. I was sitting inside the back of the truck and Fabbie was standing at the doors when we heard a pop in the mast. Then a loud bang of metal. I watched Fabbie cover his head and back away from the truck. I then saw plastic pieces of some sort of equipment falling down in pieces. I thought, "I have to get out of this truck the whole mast is coming down". Then I wondered what I would be stepping out to? Would the 56 foot metal pole fall on my head? I got out of the truck ran away and we realized the entire dish that sits at the top of that very tall mast exploded off the top. It hit the top of the truck, then landed on the ground in pieces, still connected to the wires that used to be wrapped around the mast.In the end, the engineer's think the last section of the mast didn't raise all the way, the compression built up and when the last section finally moved, the compression shot the top of the dish off.Terrifying.

It's hard to explain, unless you were really there, but we are very lucky it wasn't worse. If someone was standing there and hit by that dish, they very easily could have been critically injured. We were also sitting not far from the two other live trucks from the CBS and ABC affiliates. It could have hit them.Everyone does a good job of be safe conscious in this job. If you police running around with assault rifles, get out. Don't park near power lines. If it's lightning, don't put the metal mast up. Looking back there was no way to prepare for the dish exploding off the mast. I can say I will be a little unsure the next time I step in a live truck.