Now that a sufficient time has passed from Hurricane Katrina, the age-old art of blaming everyone else has started. It’s the government’s fault, it’s the mayor’s fault, it’s the residents’ fault and, of course, the media got it all wrong. Information about the supposed-rapes, mass looting and killings has been proven false. The cameras are only showing the bad stories, not the good. Etc., etc., etc., and on down the line.
I’m not one to defend the big dogs and their puffed-up talking heads and lead reporters out to make a name for themselves on the backs of victims. Trust me, the urge to put a bullet through my television has been pushed down on more than one occasion. But, in the midst of all the name-calling and naval-gazing, I would like to point out for every star reporter dropped in for five minutes of fluffy and useless commentary, there is a local reporter standing in mud up to her knees, trying to get the facts out to those who need them. Trying to report while things are going to hell around him. Trying to make sense of senseless deaths and government inaction. Trying, simply, to do what they were taught – objectively report the news.
I know from whence I speak here. In my past life, I was a newspaper reporter for five years. And, on Oct. 16, 1991 – only five months out of college – I stood outside the Luby’s cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, trying to make sense out of what was then the worst mass shooting in United States history.
I worked for the Temple paper, which is 20 miles from Killeen, and we heard the call on a police scanner at around 1 p.m. A man was shooting people in the Luby’s. Shooting everyone. Myself, another reporter and a photographer ran out the door. We had no idea, at that point, the magnitude of the situation. This was a time before everyone had a cell phone and Internet access. People were not calling from inside the restaurant. No one knew what was going on. Only CNN had a 24-hour newscast. It took the big dogs three hours to get there. Three hours to get a story that big is unthinkable today.
The parking lot was a make-shift media staging area and the hotel next door was serving as triage and a place for families to come for information. It also had the only telephones we could use. There was blood in the parking lot from officers and emergency personnel carrying victims to the hotel. We tried not to step in it.
Luby’s sat right off a major highway, so traffic jams and accidents began almost immediately. At 1:30 p.m., approximately 45 minutes after George Hennard started shooting, our paper, the Killeen paper and the local television news outlets were the only ones on scene. One of the TV reporters was sitting in a chair, looking pale. I knew her, so I asked if she knew what going on. She just looked up and said “All the people. He killed all the people inside.” I got her a drink of water and found an officer, who stopped long enough to tell me that at least 20 people, maybe more were dead. I got on a telephone in the hotel lobby and called our newsroom. We needed more reporters and the other photographer. They emptied everyone from the newsroom except the editors and the sports guys and sent them our way.
Bits and pieces of information, coated with a healthly dose of rumor, floated in during the next few hours. First, all the people were inside dead, then only twenty-two. A girl smashed out the back window to save her baby brother – the reality was a man smashed out the window and saved several people’s lives. One employee saved herself by climbing in a dishwasher. No one hid in the bathroom ceiling. A camera guy for one of the television stations lost his aunt. Two schoolteachers dead. Someone said the police killed the shooter, then we found out he shot himself. Family members converging on the hotel, screaming and crying. One woman punched a police officer when he told her he didn’t know where her sister was. It was chaotic, horrible and surreal.
And, then, the big dogs arrived – newspapers and television crews from the larger, nearby markets and the national media. The parking lot was taken over by helicopters and live-feed trucks. A CNN helicopter tried to land in part of the crime scene. They didn’t care about not stepping in the blood. We couldn’t move anymore. The local media got pushed and shoved out the way as aggressive reporters grabbed star-struck officials and demanded a comment on air. They didn’t care about helping anyone. They just wanted a sound bite so they could get back to their cushy, air-conditioned jobs and comment on how horrible it all was in hot, dirty little Killeen.
We in the local media fanned out. We went to the police stations, schools and hospitals. We knew these people. We lived there. We were hurting as well. We tried to help. We ran announcements, helped officers post fliers, found stores that still had crutches available and directed people to the hotel.
I sat in a news conference at a local hospital with a man and his wife who had survived. The man answered questions in a slow, stilted voice, but the woman didn’t say a word. She started out into space and never acknowledged where she was or that there was anyone in the room. Her eyes were vacant. The man on the floor next to her in the restaurant had his brains blow out by Hennard. She saw the whole thing. I couldn’t bring myself to ask any questions, because that woman looked so haunted.
And, for the local media, it didn’t end that day. We couldn’t pick up and fly back to Houston or Atlanta or Dallas. We lived there. We went to funerals and memorial services and the Killeen High School homecoming game that week, where the two schoolteachers were honored. We reported on final victim totals (24) and talked to people who left flowers and teddy bears and notes at the scene. We sat through an emotional town meeting on whether or not to re-open the Luby’s and were there the day it did. We talked to reporters from Japan, Australia, England and a host of other places we only knew from a map. We suffered and cried and drank too much to try to get rid of the images in our brains. We tried to comprehend and couldn’t. The big dogs could conjecture and comment and analyze all they wanted. They were safely removed from the horror. We weren’t. And, we knew there was no neat answer, no final commentary.
Sometime that afternoon, I walked around the restaurant to the back parking lot, which had been roped off. There in the midst of heat baking off the pavement, the broken glass and blood lay a fork. Just a simple fork someone had used at lunch. Someone who didn’t have the chance to even think about putting it down. They fled and now the fork was in the parking lot. I instantly felt nauseous. I made it to a small bush on the side of the hotel before I threw up. Then, I walked back inside and tried to do my job.
*bimbles off*
