When news really hits home

I think I have a renewed appreciation for the people in places like New Orleans who worked to cover the story of what was, in many ways, their own suffering...  from a small experience tonight.

I was sitting at the ball park tonight as I often do and I heard a bunch of sirens.  I'm in a small enough town that we occasionally chase them, but instead I thought I'd enjoy doing my gamer.  Anyway, when I finally left the park,  all I could see driving east was this huge plume of smoke over downtown — practically right where my century-old apartment is.

Anyway, an old abandoned hotel a block away from me was torched.  It had already been closed up for being a fire hazard and as old as it is, I thought it would go and take the whole block of  old buildings together.  Luckily,  within about three-four hours, they had the fire neutralized and the debris broken down with a high-ho to be sure it wouldn't spread.  Regardless, I spent the whole duration as I took 400 photos praying that it wasn't going to get me.  Then, to top it off, the little bastards set off a greenhouse at the high school at about the same time.

Thanks to our firefighters, however, both fires are out, and I can live with being at work at 4:51 a.m. in what is now a 20-hour work day.  I can't go home because the power and water have been shut off, but at least I have a home to go to.   Thankfully, also, the police stepped up their patrols after the second fire, so I don't think I'll drag myself elsewhere. It certainly hits home when it's your own home that could suddenly be the next to fall to rubble and ash.

 

Similar story.
When I was in college, for one journalism class we had to go out and write a news story from something happening around campus. I was sitting in my dorm room playing Sega NHL '94 & drinking a Natty Light scanning the paper for any leads when I saw lights and sirens fly past my dorm. So I walked outside and followed them up a wooded trail where they were already putting up a police line. I asked what was going on, but they wouldn't give me an answer. I hung around long enough that maybe to get me to go away, they told me that someone had committed suicide. I couldn't believe it, because I knew I had my story, but at the expense of this person's life. I knew my story would be better than anything anyone else in the class had but I still felt somewhat guilty about it.
It turned out to be a kid from my hometown that I vaguely knew. I was really conflicted but I did the story and turned it in before it made the local and campus papers. I got an A, but it was the most disturbing one I ever earned.

 

Got to keep quiet on some stuff, so I don't out myself.

But back in college, I was in a diner with a buddy and his girlfriend late one night when it got robbed.

(Kinda funny ... As a kid, I snuck into a casino, and was at the poker tables along with Lenny Dykstra)