Baptism by fire

I just discovered the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, out of the University of Washington. It’s a good thing to see.

I’m really tired of the profession and the public putting the media on some kind of pedestal. It’s the nature of the beast, of human nature, and this disconnect is mostly the fault of the profession. We observe, we report. We are as human as the people we talk about. We can get hardened, buried by our egos, desensitized, but we lie to ourselves and others if we can’t or don’t admit we are affected by what we do.

I’m really tired of the religious community going on about ‘liberal media.’ I know that although an organization may have a particular political slant, there are a lot of good, compassionate people in newsrooms. There are Christians in that ‘secular’ environment, and when I hear the complaints and whining by religious people, I have to walk away. It’s not a discussion I can have in a reasonable and mature fashion.
We are human, we err and even if the organization isn’t willing to back up a mistake, individuals can and do.

I was green. I shouldn’t have been sent into the field that day. But like most newsrooms, we were understaffed and overworked. I remember the news director yelling at me as I dashed out the door…

“When you get there check in, you’ll do a colour report and we’ll take it from there.”

I barely knew what a colour report was. I could see the smoke and hear the sirens as I peeled the station car out of the lot. I was so green I went down a back street. I didn’t know much about perimeters.

There wasn’t one at the back yet. The boarding house had gone up like a flimsy cardboard box. I was scared. Not of the fire and the chaos, but of going live – no time for a script. No time to scribble down anything.

Sometimes when I think back I wonder if I’m crazy. I wonder if I’ve made things up or changed them in a dreamscape. Some of what I’ve seen seems like it just can’t be real.

I parked the car and trotted down the back alley. I was way too close. The power hadn’t been shut off yet. The sounds were alive, the smells foul and the heat intense. I just stood, a bit panicky about what I’d say and how to say it.

The back door burst open. Two firemen in scott air pacs were carrying a man. They didn’t see me. They kind of dumped him on the gravel, turned and disappeared back into the backness that had billowed out with them.

Most people die in fires from the smoke. A couple of toxic breaths and they are unconscious before they hit the floor. They aren’t aware of the obscenity of what heat and fire can do to their bodies.

He was dead.
It was obvious.
Parts of his clothing were smoldering, and I had the strangest, almost unbearable urge to go to him and put out the smoldering.
The door burst open a few more times quickly and a few more bodies were dumped before the firemen saw me.
One of them lifted his mask, yelled at me to ‘get the (*&^ out of here, now’!!, slapped his mask back on and went right back into the building behind his partner.

I walked calmly over to the car, keyed the mike and called the newsroom. I had a job to do. The news director was waiting. He told me what the lead was and we did a Q & A. He wrapped.

It gets way wierder, wavy like the heat of the blaze, raspy like air going through a mask, staccato like counting a time delay. My boss was talking me through, and we both had scanners going. Of course everything was happening at once, it was an urgent, mean, consuming fire.
I didn’t hear the reports I did until much later, until after they’d gone national, until it was all over. I didn’t know I scooped other outlets, I didn’t really know squat. I didn’t know protocol or care about the rules. I didn’t know I was traumatized and that would reveal itself later.

I went to the front of the scene. Crowds were being held back, it was organized chaos. The police had pulled up a trailer and the media were beginning to cluster around it. I stood on the fringes furiously trying to script my next report in my head when the door of the trailer opened.

They had sent the brass. The guys with more buttons and epulets then the ones holding back the crowds. I didn’t really know what a command trailer was and that sometimes the brass showed up when competing interests in our systems need to be in control or pass the buck.

“Where is _____ ____?” the officer bellowed.
He was really angry.
I stepped forward.

“Where the )(*&*^&% do you get off reporting bodies?” he yelled in a command kind of way.
“We haven’t confirmed anything you said.”

I can still feel the stares of my collegues on my back.

“I saw them.” I said quietly as if counterpointing his tone.
We locked eyes. The control thing. I was too stupid and green to be upset. He slammed the door shut. Suddenly other reporters were pressing me for info.

I didn’t know I’d earned the respect of the police department that day. I didn’t know the fire department would give me an award. I didn’t know some of my collegues were jealous. All I knew was I had air time to fill, a job to do, a paycheck to earn and too much to prove to myself.

I went back to the car on the side street. (I’m not a herd animal, crowds don’t make much sense to me)
My radio went and my boss told me to get to the YMCA a few blocks away. He had a tip that they had just arrested a man for arson.

I went… in a side door, not the front and saw an attendent. I asked about the arrest.
And he told me. I didn’t know that isn’t usually how it all works.
All I knew was I felt kind of sick.

I went back to the car.

“You ready to go?”
asked my boss.

“Let’s do it.”

We did.
When we got off air, I said,

“I know that book. I know the book he was reading. I’ve met the author. I know that book.”

“No way. Get back here now. We’ve got some digging to do.”

See, as bad as the deaths, the fire, the police anger, my personal fear and all that was, the story hit me where I live. Right in my faith. But I didn’t sort that out at the time.

He was a young man, full of promise and potential when early adult schizophrenia took over.
I interviewed his parents. They’d heard my reports and invited me over to tell us about their son. He’d been at university. They had done everything they could to get him help. Many times. They were devestated. Angry. Grieving deeply. Ashamed. Determined.
The hospital had released their son after a 48 hour hold.
No meds. No follow up.

I forget how many men died that day. I don’t know why I forget. 9 – 11 – 13? It matters but I can’t remember.

I covered the hasty hospital press conference. The community was outraged. And truth is, I stood in that sterile lobby staring at the two well dressed men give their speeches (no questions) and I blacked out in rage, not one bit sorry the administrative doctors had felt forced to speak.
I remember the small lobby was crowded. I remember murmers of anger around me. I felt a cold fury at incompetence and arrogance. Our system had failed the parents, failed the young man, failed the men that died in that boarding house, failed first responders, failed the community. And after what I’d seen rationalizations and laws didn’t heal anyone.

He was deemed incompetent to stand trial. He’d set the fire, walked over to the YMCA and fell asleep on a couch, stinking of smoke and gasoline, a bit burned, clutching the book that had feed his illness, voices and visions. I can’t remember his name.

In my greeness, the events and the work became ‘my’ story. In a sick way I felt like I owned it, needed to see it through, and worked almost none stop for four days. I never held that tight to words and reports again. It’s too crazy making.

My minister called me at work. He had been a former radio staff announcer. He knew how nuts things got. We got through the premable polite stuff and he cut to the chase.

“How are you doing? You’ve been on top of this for days. How are you?”

I didn’t know how I was. I said was okay, knew I wasn’t. He told me to call him when I got home. Finally – when someone asked, really asked – I began to bow under the weariness and the weight of what had transpired. My own limits became real.

When I got home that night I called. The minister wasn’t home so the student minister and his wife came over.
God love them, seminary doesn’t prepare you for angry overworked grieving reporters. The couple seemed as surreal as what I’d seen. Dressed nicely, polite, eager to serve, too green.

I grieve backwards. It comes out as anger. I watched them talk for a few minutes, got up, went to the kitchen, got a lighter and came back into the room. Their niceness and cleaness and innocence seemed like some kind of personal affront, and I snapped.

“People smell like this when they burn,”
I said with unconcealed rage.
I took that lighter and held it to my palm. I didn’t feel the pain. A significant part of my brain knew that was not at all good.

They were horrified by my behaviour. Understandably so. Seminary doesn’t give a new middle class minister and his new wife tools to face that kind of grief and exhaustion. They didn’t handle that mad moment any better than I did.
They got huffy and a bit self-righteous in self-defense. ( I apologized to them later, but it was never really okay even though we said it was)

“And the book!!”
I thundered at them as they hurriedly scooped up their coats and made a beeline for the door.
“That book was David Wilkerson’s ‘The Vision’.
He believed it!
He thought he was saving them!
No one saved him!
No one saved his parents!
No one saved anyone!”

Apparently I fell asleep on the living room floor because that is where my minister and his wife found me. They fed me, bandaged the burn and got hold of a doctor friend who believed sleep was a great healer. They’d seen enough life to have solid boundaries and common sense. I didn’t need green. To talk to someone who’d worked in the business and who did not condemn my trauma was a healing gift from God.

It’s good to see we are acknowledging the trauma observers can absorb.
Many reporters have been baptised by fire. I’m just one of them.