Dispatches from the Gulf Coast

b-roll.net, Kevin Johnson's globally-known website (and birthplace of 'Lenslinger') continues to showcase the very best in photog prose. New to the front page, a disturbing dispatch from Rick Portier of WBRZ in Baton Rouge, who tells of pillaged lives and plundered faces...

'Wednesday was truly the most emotionally draining day I have ever experienced -- even more tragic than 9/11. I was at the Baton Rouge Centroplex with 5000 refugees. The pictures from New Orleans were terrible, but they paled in comparison to the faces I saw there.

Imagine, if you can, 5000 people who have just lost everything they have ever known: homes, possessions, family. They paced the floors of the Rivercenter and the Arena with expressionless faces, like empty shells. All had harrowing stories of fleeing the storm with only the clothes on their backs.

One man told me of how he carried his nearly 300-pound neighbor across the street to his own house as the flood waters rose above his waist. He pushed him through a window into the house. When the water inside the house got waist-deep, he again loaded the neighbor onto his back and climbed to the second floor, the attic, and finally thru the roof where they waited to be rescued.

Another man told me he watched through his kitchen window as looters beat his neighbor to death then ran-sacked his home.'

Now go read the whole thing (click on Stories from Hurricane Katrina). It'll give you something to think about the next time you're peeking through your fingers at some horrible news footage you just can't bring yourself to ignore.

Operation Thibodaux: Loading Up

I’d simply be remiss in my duties as an honest blogger if I didn’t tell you about the efforts of one Dick Carney - a Pitt County man, who among many other things, happens to be my biological Father. He’ll be the first to tell you he’s no saint, but much like my older brother, the urge to help others is deeply engraved in his DNA. When he called me late last week in an uproar over what he saw on his TV, I knew the old goat might very well jump in his pick-up and head South. I just didn’t know how soon.

But don’t take my word for it, Check out what his hometown newspaper, The Daily Reflector says about him in their front page coverage.

Dick Carney, head of the mission operation at Peace Presbyterian Church, received a call for help last week from a church in Thibodaux, La., 45 miles southwest of New Orleans.

The preacher of the 120-member Thibodaux First Presbyterian Church has only heard from eight of his parishioners since Hurricane Katrina hit.

"We know there's a lot of damage to the homes of the members of this particular church," Carney said.

That's about all that Carney and three other men, who have nicknamed themselves the Cajun Country Convoy, know about the area. The group, including Randy Riddle of Hollywood Presbyterian, Danny Gonzalez of Covenant United Methodist and Homer Tyre, plan to stay at the church and work in Thibodaux for two to three weeks.

When they arrive, they'll start by recovering people who are still trapped in their homes. Carney, Riddle and Gonzalez are contractors, so they also plan to clear roofs, clean up demolished areas and build shelters.

Peace Presbyterian, Hollywood Presbyterian and local businesses began collecting money for the mission on Saturday. In two days, they received around $10,000.
"It's so rare that you find that kind of generosity blossom with that kind of speed," said Paul Lang, pastor of Peace Presbyterian.

They already have around 500 health kits and several cases of bleach and water. They still need a lot more, including generators, cleaning supplies, baby and child-care products, nonperishable food, paper products and medical supplies.

"We're getting some direction from the folks down there about what they're short of," Carney said. "Anybody that's bought a generator and feels like they can live without it, that's a definite need."

There are no doubt scores of people just like Carney who, tired of watching tragedy unfold on the tube, have decided instead to leap into action - but there are none I'm more proud of than My Old Man. Both a clever carpenter and trained medic, he is perfect for the task of rescue and reconstruction. He's also a gifted raconteur who promises to keep in touch with his prodigal son via e-mail while he’s down on the Gulf Coast - dispatches I plan to share with my half-dozen readers. Stay Tuned...

Media Redemption in New Orleans?

For days now, I’ve wanted to tell you how proud I was of my fellow journalists performance covering the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, but with bodies still floating in stagnant water, the time didn’t seem right for a victory dance. Meanwhile, writers with many more zeroes on their paychecks have filed similar dispatches, from the New York Times to the BBC to the Washington Post to USA Today. Despite a variety of spins, all center on the same thesis: The media was KEY in exposing the madness that gripped New Orleans in the days following Katrina.

Like a lot of you, I’m still trying to figure out why leaders from every level of our government sat on their hands while a sat truck army moved into every reachable crevice of the Big Easy and began broadcasting. Never before have so many domestic U.S. journalists encountered such third-world conditions, all while politicians and generals tried to pretend it just wasn't happening. I’ll save that particular debate for the many other frothing bloggers out there, but suffice to say there’s no excuse for an elected official of any kind to feign ignorance of a national tragedy when the evidence to the contrary is blaring from every TV screen in the nation. What do you mean you can’t get help to the evacuees? Stone Phillips is down there with perfect three point lighting!

But I digress. All I really wanted to say was that for once, the electronic media worked as advertised. Long derided (rightfully so) as shallow, vain and celebrity-obsessed, TV reporters and their intrepid crews shone a much needed spotlight on a national disgrace - often at the tops of their lungs. I’m all for demanding neutrality among the Fourth Estate, but if you can point a camera at corpses and squalor withOUT getting worked up, well - I don’t want you in my camera scrum. That said, someone in Geraldo’s crew should have him with a face full of seltzer water the other night, for his eleventh-hour shrieks of outrage truly approached the clownish.

I much prefer the quiet wrath of Shepard Smith, who after days of touring his broken homeland, shut down confirmed ass-bag Bill O’Reilly’s proclamation that all was well with little more than a sour glare. Now THAT’S good TV…

Lord of the Corn

I kicked off Labor Day morning the way most Americans did, butt cheeks firmly clenched around the rickety scaffolding of a wobbly observation tower, fumbling with lenses thirty feet in the air while the sun broke over the rolling horizon of a freshly-groomed corn maze. What - you gonna tell me you slept in late? Not me. Having spent the better part of last week editing American Idol blather only to find out a planned trip to the Memphis auditions would not happen, I somehow found myself signed up for an early morning shift on this very last Monday of Summer. Bracing for balance atop my wavering perch, I scanned the rows of corn for Shannon, all the while repeating the two words that made me feel better for being up at work in the first place…

Double-time. Though truly, my level of recompense would mean little were to I pitch off my skeletal roost and land face first into the cornfield below. With that in mind, I wrapped my leg around a pole and gripped my camera tight as a familiar, folksy voice bled from my headset. ‘That’s your forecast, now let’s go to Shannon Smith - who’s lost somewhere in a cornfield...’ -- ‘Thanks, Roy...’ Shannon’s voice took over and I zoomed in ever so slowly toward where I thought she stood amid the stalks. As the lens pushed in, I picked up their forms, two ladies and having an early morning chat by the towering cornstalks. Thanks to the wireless microphone, I could hear the corn maze lady answer Shannon’s questions as clear as a bell. So too could viewers across the Piedmont. Now if only I could keep from taking a blind step into open air...


Which of course, I did. In fact, I got quite comfy atop my scaffolding as the morning wore on. When I wasn’t tracking Shannon’s distant form among the rows, I sat and watched the sunrise above the expertly groomed field of gold. A light breeze kicked up, reminding me of the promise of the Fall. Soon, the leaves on all those hardwoods would begin to wilt, and fabulously rustic colors would erupt from the trees’ final death throes. For now though, everything was still green and as I stared out over the rolling hills, I realized the smothering humidity of the Carolina summer was finally, mercifully, gone. Of course, I couldn’t help but think of the people down in Louisiana still trapped in their own sweltering hell. That’s when I realized my meager corn maze assignment was the first non-Katrina story I’d pursued in the past week. The Gulf Coast’s plight seemed a million miles away from up there, but I knew all I had to do was climb down to my live truck for a rolling update on the national nightmare. But I didn’t. Instead, I sat up there on my shaky corn-stand and allowed my self to daydream, knowing full well the cell phone on my hip would soon bring it all to an end.

Rescue Bus Fiesta

“Unit four…”

“Hi Stew - gonna need to send you to Winston. There’s a busload of evacuees comin’ into a shopping center off MLK. “

With that, all thoughts of sunrises evaporated. I sat up in my office chair, leaned into the steering wheel and goosed the engine. Any cornhusks still stuck to my bumper quickly took flight as I fell into the fast lane. Twenty minutes and three interstate exits later, I pulled into the strip mall in question. Or so I thought. The lot in front of the Shoe Shop was all but abandoned. My eyebrows crinkled in the rearview mirror as I threw the Ford Explorer into its third u-turn of the day. Halfway through my impromptu donut I spotted the unmistakable profile of a TV live truck speeding past the parking lot. Falling in behind my competitor‘s van, I smiled at the freebie and tried to drive casual - tough to do when you’re the last float in a logo parade. I thought about tossing a few lollipops out to pedestrians, but the wino talking to a tree made me think better of it.

“Actually, it’s only one refu -- guest, a young man from New Orleans by way of Baton Rouge. We had hoped to bring back thirty-five people, but red tape kept them there …”

I pressed a button and marked my shot. Leaning into the viewfinder I rode the iris and zoomed in. As the image of a diminutive politician spoke into the microphones thrust before her, I fought with the low, stubborn sunrays behind her. Every time she shifted from one foot to another, blinding rays took enveloped the tiny screen, causing her image to silhouette. Three inches to my left, a newspaper photographer scrunched face and fired his own weapon. With every pull of the trigger, the shutter‘s sharp bark drowned out the sound coming from the coiled headset around my neck. I wanted desperately to reach down and pull the tiny speakers up over my ears, but with a face full of camera and colleagues, I couldn’t spare a hand. Besides, any sudden movement would jar the pens and lenses of a half-dozen working journalists - not something you want to do before lunch.

By the time the bus wheezed into the far end of the parking lot, the press-knot had loosened; assorted shooters and scribes fanned out among the mostly African-American group of volunteer, church leaders and just plain curious. Six says ago, this ad-hoc committee of congregation members had dispatched six of it own to Louisiana, in a local tour bus full of donated food, bottled water and good intentions. Today, as the very bus glided in and hissed to a stop - it’s familiar flat windshield a good deal grimier, heartfelt applause broke out among both the grinning and the embittered. With an eye on the other camera-heads in the crowd, I glided forward, letting my square lens-hood part the throng. By the time the doors of the bus hissed open, I held the entire de-boarding process at point-blank range. As the wall of lenses, loiterers and looky-loos tightened behind me, I pressed my eye into the viewfinder and wondered what was exactly that was pressing into my kidneys.

"Welcome to Winston-Salem!”

A tall skinny black man in a pale green shirt stepped from the shadows of the bus and into the bright sunlight. Cupping a hand over his eyes, he surveyed the assembled masses: squinting cameramen, beaming choir members, fresh-scrubbed children holding hand made signs. Through the blue haze of my XD’s eyepiece, I tracked the nervous look on the young man’s face as he took in the crowd in slow-motion wonder. We had to be a curious sight to this beleaguered traveler, total strangers putting on a conqueror’s return. For a moment, I thought the guy was going to turn around and get back on a bus, but after a few hard gulps, Rendell Bartholomew of the west bank of New Orleans smiled and waved to the grateful crush of onlookers, who instantly roared in approval. Perhaps the displaced Wal-Mart employee with only a duffel bag to his name sensed how badly we all needed a hero to cheer for. Whatever his true thoughts, the exhausted and affable young man hugged old ladies, signed autographs, answered countless dumb questions from the media and generally lifted everyone’s spirits, before climbing into his brother-in-law’s car for a final leg to Virginia.

I, for one, hope he rests well tonight.

NBC Photog Speaks Out

NBC photojournalist Tony Zambado is receiving praise and derision from industry insiders for his outspoken assessment of the anarchy at the New Orleans convention center:

"There's no support here. There's no foundation. There's no Plan B, Plan A. These people are very desperate. I saw two gentlemen die in front of me because of dehydration. The sanitation was unbelievable. The stench in there, it was unbelievable. Dead people around the walls of the convention center, laying in the middle of the street, in their dying chairs, where they died, right there in their lawn chair.

"They were just covered up. In their wheelchair, covered up. Laying there for dead. Babies, two babies. Dehydrated and died.

I just tell you, I couldn't take it."

Of course journalists aren't supposed to voice opinions - especially those of us with cameras on our shoulders, so its no surprise that Zambado's remarks have sparked a debate at industry watering holes both real and pixelated. A brief sample:

"I don't need someone to tell me how to think or feel in a "news" report. I want the facts. The things he states as facts in the report, such as them not starting riots, no hostility, no plan b or plan a, are just emotional repetition of what he's been told or conjecture. They are things he could not know." - Frank McBride

"I do feel Tony Zambado's first person experience added to the understanding of what was going on during this tragedy. I don't feel "journalism" was compromised because he was no different than any other witness to an event we might interview for a story other than he had video and sound to back up what he was saying." - John "Lensmith" Dumontelle

"Tony Zambado is a hero. His pictures and words conveyed the despairity of the situation at the N.O. convention center. Thanks to him hundreds of lives were saved. If he overstepped his bounds as a journalist... I don't care. He conveyed the gravity of the situation in any way he could. Those people were running out of time. Thanks to his efforts those people finally have food and water today. Thank you Tony." - Fisher

Strong words from those who walk the walk. I myself haven't seen the clip yet (who watches TV anymore?), but I have no real problem with the transcript. As it reads, the piece is what we call a 'Nat Sound Package', an edited collection of soundbites and background noise devoid of narration. These type of reports can be very powerful as undiluted, first-person accounts. Here, Zambado plays the role of interview-ee, he is not the producer of the piece and harbors no responsibility for it's end content. If anyone's journalistic ethics should be called into question, it should be those of Zambado's higher-ups, who sanctioned the airing of an employee's passionate opinion. Personally, I'd like to buy my fellow photog a beer for having the grapes to tell it like it is.

Stroll through a flood shelter full of dying innocents and tell me how YOU feel.

Idol Auditions Cancelled

Due to the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts taking place in the city of Memphis, the producers of American Idol have cancelled the auditions scheduled for there next week. Thus, I WON'T be jumping on an airplane this weekend. Instead, I'll cut the lawn, hang out with the kids, do some reading. I was looking forward to Beale Street and all, but this just ain't the time to make a fuss over ten thousand delusional songbirds. But fear not Idol fans (Bueller...anyone?), producers will soon announce another audition city for the '06 season. Hopefully, I'll get to go, for after this incredibly grim week, prowling another arena floor full of clamoring, off-kilter wannabes doesn't sound so bad.

(Special thanks to esteemed Memphian Scott Hayes for the additional heads-up.)

Misery Through A Tube

A fellow news shooter and old cohort of mine, Mike Durenberger of WNCT-TV, posts a valid question on my favorite message board:

How do we or can we separate ourselves or deal with the depth of emotions brought on by watching our fellow humans reduced to basic, primitive survival behavior. I've been through more than a dozen hurricanes including the aftermath of hurricane Floyd six years ago. That was one thing. What's happening in the Gulf coast region is deeper.

My response:

We don't. We keep our humanity at close range even as we zoom in on the devastated and the downtrodden. Otherwise we're truly the heartless jackals many people already think we are. Sure, we develop thick outer shells, hide our true feelings under a thick layer of cynicism as we make crass jokes with other journeyman shooters and scribes. But the day we don't allow the tragedies we document to shape our soul in some way is the day we become camera-toting robots.

I don't wanna be a robot. Instead I want to pay for my all-access pass to calamity by treating the subjects of my stories with wit and compassion. To do anything less is to betray those we point our cameras at. Am I sometimes a callous bastard? Sure - on the surface. But deep down inside, my heart goes out to each and every victim I witness - whether its through the wide-screen in my den or the tiny black and white screen at the end of that magical tube.

Like you Mike, I've covered countless storms. The one that left the deepest scars on my pockmarked psyche was without a doubt Hurricane Floyd. I will never forget standing amid the flood victims at the Tarboro High School gymnasium. Whole families hovering on government-issue cots, an old man brushing his teeth with a filthy rag, a little girl playing with an amputated Barbie doll...

Those scenes will follow me to the grave, which is how it should be. I use them to help me gain perspective when I find myself bitching about work, speeding past a panhandler or explaining life's many mysteries to my girls. I don't know what well of experience your average accountant draws from in times like these, but I know what the readers of this message board do. It's part of what makes me proud to be photog - and it's what makes me proud of you, too.

More responses to Mike's question can be found here. Read them, as they prove we're not the thoughtless leeches so often portrayed in movies. Most of the time, anyway...

Covering Katrina

As anyone who's been near a TV set in the past forty-eight hours can tell you, the images coming out of the Gulf Coast region are nearing the unfathomable. While the human suffering of the refugees deserves all the attention, I tend to see things through the filter of an overworked viewfinder. Thus, a quick glance at the unprecedented challenges facing many media crews covering the Katrina's aftermath (with a grateful nod to Lost Remote).

During the storm, Weather Channel stud Jim Cantore and crew found themselves scrambling for higher ground as floodwaters poured into a Gulfport retirement home:

"We're not even shooting [video] anymore. We're basically in self-preservation [mode] right now. We're helping people put up boards and sandbags to keep the water from coming in. We've become part of the crew."

A Washington Post article describes how state-of-the-art gear and top-shelf talent aren't always enough when traversing such a hostile landscape:

'NBC anchor Brian Williams got his satellite truck trapped in downtown flooding, a tire and the gas tank damaged. His team stayed as the water rose, reporting from the area and waiting for someone to come pull the truck out. John Roberts, the CBS News White House correspondent, spent Tuesday on an overpass over Interstate 10. He had to cut off the satellite feed between transmissions to save gas. Staffers for several networks are sleeping in trucks. Some NBC crew members have started suffering from digestive ailments.'

Of course, some broadcasters don't have to leave their workplace to experience Katrina's wrath. In Biloxi, WLOX continues operations, despite a damaged building and a fallen tower:

'While the station sustained heavy damage during the storm, they continued to broadcast and are continuing to broadcast at this time. They are also simulcasting through several radio stations in the market. Many WLOX employees have lost homes or their homes have suffered heavy damage.'

But what haunts me most is the following passage from a WWLTV blog, that describes a scene straight out of a Stephen King novel:

'Talked to Donny (news photographer Donny Pearce of WVUE) today for a while, he's in Shreveport with his folks, sounds very shaken up, had a horrifying escape from the city apparently, people hanging on his truck begging for help/food/money....'

I'm not asking you to feel sorry for the Fourth Estate. Save that (and your donations) for the downtrodden and the devastated. Just know that the reporters, photojournalists, sat truck operaters and field producers aren't just phoning it in. They're on the ground and in the water, filing heartbreaking reports that will hopefully galvanize a nation into action. Sure, when the flooding subsides they'll go home, but not without a few scars etched into their psyche. Trust me.