I
got a couple e-mails about my first report over the telephone. People were
telling me that they could hear how serious this situation was from the sound
of my voice. My buddy Karna Bergstrom with WCCO.com took time to digitize the
first breaking news report
from around 6:21 p.m. I start speaking at 1:28 into the file. And the clip runs until another phone call
came into our control room "phoner" system and producer Matt Liddy
accidentally hung up on me. Sorry for
calling you out, Matt. I just report the
truth.
My
first words: "Yeah Frank, I just got here. The scene is pretty
unbelievable. I'm looking at a huge fire.
It appears a tractor-trailer is on fire here where this part of the
bridge collapsed."
"It
looks like a total failure of the bridge… it's at a 45 degree angle." "The number of emergency vehicles here
is unreal." You're hearing the
quiver in my voice, combined with me walking around like crazy, trying to find
out whatever I can get.
"You
can't imagine how horrific that was for the folks on the bridge." It's
really strange to sit back and listen to this report. I guess I'm proud that I was able to paint a
decent word picture of what was going on.
You really do get a sense of the chaos.
Remember, this report is about 10-15 minutes after the bridge collapsed.
