Handling the chaos of breaking news has in some sense become robotic for me after my 8 years on the Assignment Desk at WFMZ.  My mind knows what to do next automatically:  who to call for information; where to send crews; what angles we want to attack;  how to set up live hits from CNN;  how to take feeds.  It’s all second nature.  I have trained myself to react to situations without letting them take an emotional toll on me.  On the morning of February 10^th, that training went out the window, and I will forever remember the emotional impacts of that day and those to follow.  While most of that first 10 hour workday remains a blur of phone calls, meetings, logistics planning, and research, there are a few moments in time that will forever be with me.

It was early Thursday morning and my family and I were just starting our day.  As I walked down the stairs holding my daughter’s hand, my husband was switching on the news.   As my eyes focused on the television screen, my heart skipped a beat.  It was a fire scene like I have never seen before.  I grabbed my daughter and raced down the stairs, my stomach now securely implanted in my throat.  The newsroom, which had been chaotic and active all night, had mercifully let me sleep.   But now as I raced to get my family out the door, I kept one ear on the TV and one eye on my email soaking in all of the information I could.  My mind was racing.  Could this really be happening?  In my city?  How did it happen?  Could this happen in my neighborhood?

As I got to work, mind still racing, I was greeted by phones ringing off of the hook.  I ran to my desk and picked up my phone.  The woman on the other end of the line introduced herself to me.  Her name was Michelle Hall.  She was calling to thank us; more specifically, to thank the person she talked to overnight who provided her with information on the explosion.  Her in-laws, Bea and William Hall, lived at 544 N. 13th street.  She was watching our coverage, and she was certain that we were showing her family’s home in our video.  She and her husband, Mark, had been calling everyone they could to get information, to find out what was happening,  to find out if one of the homes they were watching burn to the ground belonged to their parents.  Nobody could give them those answers.  When she called in to our newsroom, one of my coworkers confirmed for them where the explosion occurred and told her that emergency officials had set up a shelter for evacuees at Ag Hall in Allentown.  Mark Hall headed for the scene.

As we all know now, Bea and William Hall lost their lives in the explosion.  Their neighbors, Ophelia Ben, Katherine Cruz and Matthew Vega also perished in the explosion.  Michelle and I spoke for over half an hour. The calmness in her voice still resonates with me today.  I don’t know that the reality of what had happened had caught up with her yet. We spoke about her mother-in-law and father-in-law--where they may have been at the time of the explosion, what they might have been doing.  Michelle told me that William was likely up in bed, Bea most likely on the telephone.  It would turn out that she was absolutely correct.  I can’t tell you what was happening around me while I was on the phone with Michelle, but I don’t think I’ll ever forget our conversation. 

Later on that morning, as city and county officials gathered for a news conference, we sprung in to action and sent crews scrambling to get in to position to air the news conference live for our viewers.  As the clock ticked down to 11:30 am, the newsroom went quiet and all of us were fixated on the TV screen.  (It may surprise some of you to know that I don’t often get a chance to watch our news coverage, but the fact of the matter is, I’m usually working on gathering information for future newscasts and not able to take a break.)  I distinctly remember Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski stepping up to the microphone.  He was dressed casually (a far departure from his typical suit and tie) and you could see the worry and concern written all over his face.  However, it was not until Lehigh County Coroner Scott Grim came to the podium that the magnitude of this event really struck me.  I’ve spoken to Scott hundreds of times over the past 8 years and not once have I known him to be without words.  As he spoke of the victims, from 79 years of age to 4 months old, he was visibly shaken.  It was then that I knew this was an event, a moment in time, which I would never forget.

The following days brought much of the same.  I spent my days on the phone with emergency officials, survivors, friends and family members of victims, helping to piece together all of their stories.  Stories of lost loved ones, lost pets, lost memories, and lost dreams, but beneath all of those stories there was one resounding story that would continued to emerge:  the story of hope…hope that these losses would not be in vain.

Over the past few months, I have had the pleasure of speaking with Mark Hall.  We’ve chatted about how his life has changed in the past year, and about how he and his daughter have been coping.  Sadly, his wife, Michelle lost a battle with cancer in the fall of 2011.  In Mark’s words, the last year has “been a blur.”  His main focus now, concentrating on his and his daughter’s well being.  He, like many of the survivors and family members from the explosion, only hopes that his story, his losses, can promote change that allows for this kind of situation to never happen to anyone else again.