Did you see the sink holes in North Hollywood last week? You know, the two that caused massive sink holes?
Especially the one that almost ate a fire truck?
That
was a cool shot of the fire engine sitting half submerged in a sink
hole full of water. I think every news photographer who carries a
still camera in Los Angeles got snappy on it.
Except me.
I
never got assigned to the "big" sink hole story. Sure, I could have
driven over and checked it out on my own, but that feels like cheating
somehow.
It's not like I'm envious of anyone else getting a good picture. . .
. . .wait, no, that's exactly what I am, but not so much of anyone else's work. . .well, okay, maybe a little.
Really,
I guess in this situation it was more frustration that I volunteered to
drive one of our news vans for the promo shoot the day the second
sinkhole almost ate a fire engine.
I sat around for hours until
they finally cancelled the promo shoot because of un-clear skies. I
was headed for home (and at a decent traffic avoidance hour to boot).
The
sky was relatively clear, I'm pretty sure birds were singing (sure,
they must be singing somewhere) and I'd gotten maybe five minutes away
from the station. I was on the freeway when I got a call to come
back. The station needed me to load up in a microwave truck and go
check out another sink hole, this one in the mid-cities area.
My
dream of getting home early in the afternoon was dead. Nothing for me
to do, but accept my fate. I turned it around and soon I was heading
out in one of the crappiest vans in our fleet.
Someone else was assigned my regular unit since I wasn't going to be needing it.
I
drove from North Hollywood over to a street just North of the 10
Freeway near Fairfax. When I go there the street was empty, and it
looked like something had been done to the road. Also, there was water
in the street.
But, no big huge sinkholes.
I
drove around the blocked off street to see if I was maybe missing
something around the corner. Once around the block and a crew had
magically appeared.
That was surprising.
Apparently a
water main had broken in the area and had caused a water outage for the
neighborhood. These things happen, but the desk still wanted their
water main breakage.
I shot it and fed the video in. Packed up
and drove back to the station feeling a bit unfulfilled. The video I
shipped back was fine (even if it might never see the light of day) and
I got some still shots. It just didn't seem like anything as big as a
firetruck was going to fall into my sink hole.
Some guys get all the luck.
