VIDEO AND PHOTOS BELOW
In the Spring of 1976, a man whom I had known for several years offered me a job in the news business. His name was Jack Cato, he owned a company called Houston News Service. They serviced radio and television stations with Houston News. Back then, there was no internet, no electronics per se, just 16mm film cameras and cassette tape recorders. My job was to monitor police scanners. At the time, there were four choices: RCA, Bearcat, Radio Shack, and Regency. When we heard a call, we would run it. Get the interview on tape and either bring it back to the office in Louisiana in downtown Houston or feed it to the station. Again, no internet. To feed it was simple. You plugged one side of a cable into the earphone jack of the tape recorder. The other side was two alligator clips. You found a phone, any phone. Either drop a dime in it, dial the station, and tell them you were about to feed. You then would unscrew the mouthpiece, hook the two alligator clips to the contacts where the mouthpiece was, and push play. Another man I worked with was Dave Davis; we both worked the police beat and mostly at night. Not long after, Dave introduced me to a friend at ABC 13. Doug Tisdale, Doug liked my work, and within weeks, I began to shoot for them. The camera at the time, which I found out was actually Dave Ward’s, was a Bell and Howell 70-DR. It was 16mm and held a 100-foot spool. The other choice was a much heavier 16mm camera that held a 400-foot spool, which was 11 minutes of film. After a story was shot, it had to go back to the station and run through a processor. Once that was complete, it would go to edit. To edit, you would actually use a portable viewer, cut the film, and go to the next sequence that you wanted, and then splice that film. All this before it was even loaded to be put on the air. One thing that you had to be extremely careful with was not to damage the film sprockets. If they were damaged and fed into the processor. The film would stop feeding. This was a major issue as at that point the film was destroyed. But most of the time, your film wasn’t the only one in the processor; others were spliced to it. Those, too, would be destroyed. Over the years, the cameras changed, the electronic age started, and it went to tape. The first ones were the camera and either a backpack or a cart with the recorder.
I was thrown to the wolves for my very first major scene. On May 11, 1976, just a little after 11 am, the radios went nuts reporting a crash and explosion at the Southwest Freeway and West Loop 610. In front of the Houston Post building. This was just a few miles from the station. Everyone headed to the scene. Again, no internet, no cell phones, had Johnson mobile phones, which you had to go through an operator or voice pagers. Heading to the scene, there was a huge white cloud. It turned out to be an ammonia truck, partially full, that had left the Tenneco Plant in Pasadena and was headed back to Corpus. He came off 610 onto the Southwest Freeway Ramp to go outbound at a high rate of speed. The load of ammonia shifted, and the bridge rail did not support the truck as it rolled. It went over the side, hitting a bridge column on the way down, and landed on the Southwest Freeway below. It had already ruptured, exploded, and was burning. Cars were scattered, your eyes were burning, and victims were lying on the ground or were walking. The first ambulance came in, and after that, a line of them. I believe it was Houston Station 3 first there. The truck driver was deceased. One other person was killed in the crash, five more died after inhaling the gas. Injured were 178, 78 of whom went to area hospitals. You didn’t have it like you do now, where people just slowed down and drove by, dozens of motorists exited their vehicles and went to aid the injured. Twelve Oaks and Bellaire Hospital were the closest at the time. I left the scene and headed to the hospital. Back then, there was no such thing as HIPAA, hospitals loved media coverage. We were able to interview patients in the Emergency Room as they were being treated by doctors. While at the hospital, I was told to go to local grocery stores as people were buying up ammonia, inhaling It and going to the hospital claiming they had been affected.
After that, I fell in love with working the police beat and continued on. Houston Police were located near downtown at 61 Reisner Street. On the third floor was the press room. Dispatch radios were piped to it. On one end of the hall was Homicide, and on the other, Robbery. Night reporters would sit and wait for a call. There was no real competition, and many times we would ride to a scene together to save gas. The night crew was pretty much made up of me, Jim Priest, Marshall Jard, and Dave Davis with Channel 13, Phil Archer and Mike Capps with Channel 2, and Dave Westerhouse with Channel 11. Then there was Mark Henderson with the Chronicle and Larry Trout with the Post. Our jobs were to cover stories at night, mostly. Again, back then, there were no what you would call rules. On a fatal crash scene or a homicide scene, if you didn’t have a body shot, you didn’t have a story. Those types of scenes, the medical examiner would respond, and a local funeral home would then transport the body to the morgue, which was in the basement of Ben Taub Hospital. One of those examiners was Jay Evans, who had been with the Houston Fire Department. Many a night I rode with him, his old white Plymouth Fury with a Federal Q2 windup type siren. Yeah, I got to push that foot switch a lot. One thing was for sure: you never missed a scene if you rode with him. Over the next 50 years, I covered many major stories in Houston, including the Borden Ice Cream Plant in downtown Houston Explosion.
In 1977, the big story was Joe Campos Torres, who was. He was a 23-year-old Veteran who was arrested at a bar. The officers beat him badly, and he was transported to jail. The jail supervisor refused to accept him and told the officers to take him to the hospital. Several days later, he was found floating in Buffalo Bayou, dead. The officers were charged with murder.
Not long after that was the Randall Webster case. Webster had stolen a van from a Dodge dealership and fled. Police attempted to stop him, but he fled. A cab driver tried to assist and was running parallel with the stolen van when it quickly turned. The cab driver then witnessed the first officer pull the male out of the vehicle and shoot him. At the time, that was all it was: police shooting an armed suspect. However, about the same time Houston Mayor Hofienz was accused of using drugs and arrested at a homo-sexual club. It was thought to be a cover-up, and the Grand Jury was looking into it. It just so happened that as we were there for the Grand Jury, the Randal Webster case was also being heard. All this time it was thought to be a good shooting. That was until the taxi driver who was there started talking to us and telling us what he saw. The case was investigated by both Harris County DA and HPD, and the Grand Jury did not indict. However, almost two years later, after Webster’s father’s persistence, the FBI investigated and found the gun to be a throwdown that was retrieved from the Houston Police Property room some 10-years earlier.
In July of 1979 fire broke out at the Woodway Square Apartments in Southwest Houston. The afternoon had strong winds, and back then, most apartments and homes had wood shingles. First units arriving immediately started calling for help as the high winds were fanning flames across the wood shingle roofs. Flames were jumping from building to building, and embers were entering the neighborhoods, igniting roofs. In all, 7 alarms were called for, which included equipment backed into Houston Fire stations from Cy-Fair, Little York, and Northwest Volunteer Fire Departments. Hundreds lost everything they owned. At one point,t it was discussed using explosives to demolish one building to make a fire break. As firefighters worked on controlling the apartment fire, booster trucks were tasked with driving through the neighborhoods, extinguishing spot fires on the roofs of homes. On the day of the fire, the Houston Fire Department requested that the city ban wood shingles. They refused, but the day after the fire, they decided to ban them. In that day and age, most new homes had wood shingles, and they were required by homeowners associations.
In February 1982, Huntsville and firefighters from as far away as Bryan fought the blaze of Old Main on the Sam Houston University Campus.
Another big one was Big 3 Industries had a massive explosion involving welding bottles just off Hempstead Highway. That fire even consumed HFD Ladder 38. Over the years, there were several scenes where firefighters were killed. McDonald’s, Four Leaf Tower, Southwest Inn, El Festival Ballroom.
Just like today, there was a police shortage. Houston Police were close by to back up officers, but in Harris County, both deputies and Troopers could need help for well over 30 minutes before another unit got to them. However, wrecker drivers, who are now in this day and age called vultures, were always minutes away from an office needing help, and they never worried about getting hurt while assisting. Still to this day, in many counties that is the same case. But even in Montgomery and Harris County, the practice has not stopped to this day. Even with Montgomery County encrypting radios, the wrecker drivers are still within eyesight of officers and do not hesitate to assist.
The age of electronics has evolved. One of the first Live Trucks was KTRK 13, which was built in-house. But if a live truck was unavailable, you had to shoot the story, then drive it to the station. You were still shooting on BETA Tapes. Then the cameras with SD cards and hard drives came out. With the internet speed increasing, you were able to start sending video over the internet. Next came devices like Live Vue, a pack that was comprised of multiple air cards, which helped speed up feeds and enabled you to go live from the scene.
Then it got to a point of having the internet in your vehicle or phone. Instances such as sitting in New Orleans watching radar as Katrina moved onshore. Or the now Texas Storm Chasers watching weather in their vehicles and racing to intercept tornadoes.
It has changed over the past 50 years from being fun to a run-of-the-mill job. But the only problem is, once it’s in your blood, it’s like an addiction. It is hard to quit.
Once again, this week I plan to start with the videos I have shot on that calendar day from years past. On YouTube, I currently have 6,100 videos posted by month and year. I have close to 10,000 from years past, which I plan to archive on YouTube.I have hundreds more that were lost in Allison in 2001.
