Fire Men

I installed, removed and reinstalled a beat up (but legally-registered!) police scanner into several cars I drove during those years, but listening constantly seldom resulted in much worth racing towards before things at the scene had died down. The scanner also had flashy lights and looked cool.

My fiancé (Sue) and I were out messing around late one night. But it was during a firefighters’ strike, and a large blaze broke out at a retirement complex still under construction in the suburbs. KC police officers were called in to work as substitutes, sometimes literally switching hats to shoot water, I would imagine using very unfamiliar equipment. (I heard later that this fire got too big too fast; the main building was a total loss probably before any of the subs got there.)

A friend of mine on the KC Times staff heard about the fire too and got there ahead of me. He was concentrating on shooting the activities surrounding the fire itself: THAT was a huge lesson for me. Thanks Ed!

So Sue and I drove down to the AP darkroom around midnight I think, and got to work processing the film to get a decent print. Type up the caption, stick it to the print, then leave it for the staffers to transmit when there was sufficient time available overnight on the nationwide Wirephoto network.

Went home and crashed, smelling like burning stuff. Little did I know -or even expect- that the effort to capture the subbing Fire Men was of national interest, something KC didn’t enjoy very often.