(Editor’s Note: The following article by John P. Zarrella, Senior News Producer at WXIA-TV, traces the newsman’s coverage of Hurricane David. Zarella is a parishioner of the Cathedral of Christ the King.)

Television news is as complex as it is fascinating. There is a lot more to it than a brightly lit studio and an anchorman reading from a piece of paper, although that was certainly the case in years gone by! Perhaps no other medium has moved from infancy to adulthood in so short a time.

Television news is a hodgepodge of personalities: reporters, photographers, editors, producers, technicians and the list goes on. Each of these individuals performing his or her own job produces that phenomenon we call “the Newscast.”

This column is about “the Newscast.” It is about the people who put the program together. It is about a bad night in the control room when film reports go to the ever feared “black,” and the anchorman can’t read a word. It is about covering major news events - presidential visits, politics, crime, and natural disasters as seen through the eyes of a newsman. It is a column that looks at the often times whimsical world of TV news.

The story of a deadly storm made headlines and led local and national newscasts for more than a week around Labor Day. Hurricane David was a giant. Born in the far reaches of the Atlantic, David churned across the Leeward Islands, building strength over warm tropical waters and then bringing its full killer force to bear on the Dominican Republic.

In the newsroom, we had begun keeping a close watch on what the experts were now calling the storm of the century. By the time David stumbled across the mountains of Hispanola, we had flown the Storm Trackers into the eye of the hurricane and a news crew was stationed at the Miami Hurricane Center following every move the giant storm made.

Sunday, the day before Labor Day, David had been wallowing off the coast of Cuba but now showed signs of strengthening once again. As the storm headed for Florida, we took off for Miami.

The next 30 hours were anything but dull. The taxi was late and the plane was leaving in half an hour. Our driver said she couldn’t promise anything. At the point, we virtually commandeered the vehicle. We stuck her in the back seat alongside our equipment and with reporter Collin Siedor at the wheel, we took off down the interstate. It must have been a funny site: a reporter, cameraman and producer in the front seat while our driver squirmed and bit her nails in the back. At one point she called the base asking for permission for passengers to ride up front. Little did they know!

Hurricane David was just a few hours off the Miami coast when we landed, which was anything but a smooth touchdown. Landing from west to east, right into David’s fringe winds, the pilot put the 727 down power on and everyone, including a stewardess fastened snuggly in her seat, thought the pilot had left the tail section on the end of the runway. As it turned out, all other flights into Miami after ours were cancelled.

For the next couple of hours, we ran around Miami Beach shooting our first report. You may have seen it, the boarding up along Collins Avenue, the wind and high surf along the beach and an evacuation center where several elderly people were waiting patiently for a bus to take them inland.

Back at the airport we found (with a good bit of luck) a plane leaving for Atlanta. With a ten dollar bill, we bribed a passenger to take our video tape back with him (someone would meet him at the gate to pick-up the precious package).

The name of the T.V. news game is to beat your competition and make your deadlines. Our tape made it for the Sunday late news. We made our first deadline! The next couple of deadlines would not be so easy.

Hurricane David was still creeping up on Miami when we got to our hotel room. We unpacked and sorted the equipment, threw on our rain gear and headed back out into the now gale force winds.

At the Miami Beach Convention Center, we found about one thousand people, most of them elderly and sick. At 1:15 in the morning they were just now getting dinner of soup and canned pears. From a newsman’s point of view, it was dynamic stuff: all the poor people with confused and somber faces. Most of them were a lot younger and a lot healthier the last time a hurricane bore down on Miami.

David decided, however, to turn his attention northward and at five in the morning on Labor Day so did we, scurrying up to Fort Lauderdale, where we caught the back end of the storm. The AIA beach road, made famous each year by the college kids, was torn into chunks and salt water poured across it as the waves crashed not more than 20 yards away. We shot what we could and turned back for Miami to try and make another deadline. Our network people allowed us the use of a video and audio landline back to Atlanta, which they had installed for hurricane coverage. At 10:30 Labor Day morning, through the magic of television technology, our station in Atlanta was receiving our story. Another deadline was made.

We headed north again, fifty miles up the coast to Palm Beach. By this time Miami was clearing up. The winds and rainsqualls had died down. But, we ran right into David when we hit the Palm Beach County line. Our story ended here. While shooting along the beach in 60 to 70 mile per hour winds, a wave inundated our video tape recorder knocking us out of the chase. David had beaten us. Perhaps we were lucky, we might have ended up chasing David right up the East Coast.

Soggy, tired, dirty and hungry (we hadn’t eaten since early Sunday evening) we dragged ourselves back to Fort Lauderdale Airport, got on a plane and headed home.

Covering Hurricane David was an adventure, even for an experienced newsman. But, I often think about those thousand or more people who died in the Dominican Republic. What if David with 150 mile per hour winds had missed that island, had missed those ten thousand foot mountains that tore its guts out? If not for a bit of good fortune, or the grace of God, covering the storm of the century might have become more a nightmare than an adventure.