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Local 45 Members Have Room With A View

April 2004 IBEW Journal

In todays 24-hour news environment, the pressure is always on to get the news of the moment out the fastest. And when local news breaks in Southern California, it is often the images collected by helicopter camera operators that hit the airwaves first.

A combination of sprawling geography and highway gridlock make the presence of news helicopters crucial in the 60-city megalopolis that comprises the greater Los Angeles area. The best of those airborne camera-wielding professionals are represented by IBEW Local 45, Hollywood, California, which has contracts with some of the biggest television stations in the state.

"Helicopters are a very important part of the news business here," said Local 45 Business Manager Lloyd Webster. "On every story, the choppers are there, right away."

With a 1,000-square-mile coverage area that includes Los Angeles, Ventura, Orange and Riverside counties, helicopters have the advantage of getting the news bestwith great visualsas well as getting it first. This part of Southern California is the biggest and most sophisticated helicopter news market in the country.

Aaron Fitzgerald

"We usually get a couple of live helicopter reports by the time the ground crews get there," said Aaron Fitzgerald, who works as a cameraman/reporter for KCBS and KCAL, both owned by Viacom.

Often, they even beat responding fire and police departments, said KCAL helicopter cameraman Chris Torgerson.

California news is more than O.J. Simpson-style freeway police chases and traffic gridlock, although it does still have its share of both. "A very small percentage of what we do are the car chases, but its a cultural phenomenon out here," Fitzgerald said. "Well also cover shootings, flooding, fireanything you would see on the news. On the other hand, there are stories than can only be covered by helicopter."

Fitzgerald cited natural disasters that restrict travel in an area, like the brush fires that ravaged mountainside communities last year. Nothing can match an aerial view in providing perspective to a story. Although they may appear to the viewer to be close to the action, the helicopters remain between 1,000 and 1,500 feet above ground.

During newscasts, Fitzgerald said, he and the helicopter pilot usually remain in the air, "cruising," ready to respond to a breaking news event. They listen to police and emergency scanners and rely on a network of official spokespersons and sources in the fire and police departments.

Pressure to be the first on the air with news pictures from the latest scene drives the highly competitive business. All the crews strive for that first "exclusive" shot from a scene. And no one wants to be the last helicopter to arrive.

"When you fly around in an expensive machine, you want to feel youre delivering the goods," Torgerson said.

Fitzgerald said KCBS and KCAL have the advantage of being based out of an airport miles from the one the other networks use. "It helps us sneak around" without notice, he said.

At KCAL, Torgerson said he uses between six and nine police, fire and emergency scanners monitoring more than 1,000 channels. Last October, the brush fires tested the endurance and skill of the helicopter crews, Togerson said. He and the pilot/reporter that comprise their two-man team commonly worked intense 12-hours shifts.

"The mental acuity it takes to run a camera and navigate and juggle the different instrumentation takes a lot out of you," Torgerson said. "If youre flying more than four hours a day, thats a lot of flying."

Torgerson said the A-Star helicopter he flies in, which was built as a six-seater, only has room enough for two because it is loaded with heavy newsgathering equipment vital to his work. The ship travels around 105 miles per hour. Most news helicopters in Los Angeles contain two-man crews with one pulling double dutyeither a reporter/pilot and a cameraman or a pilot and a reporter/cameraman.

Gil Leyvas

But a job that involves floating over crime scenes or disasters can be dangerous, especially when as many as 10 choppers are covering the same event. That does not include police helicopters also tracking an unfolding scene from the air. Usually, Torgerson said, law enforcement aircraft fly several hundred feet closer to the ground. The main concern for pilots is keeping tabs on the other helicopters occupying the same "level" or altitude. Thats why constant radio communication among pilots is vital. "Everybody coordinates with everyone else to make it as safe as possible," Torgerson said.

Recently, when he was hovering over a police standoff involving a man with a rifle, Fitzgerald said the armed man started shooting at the helicopters. Luckily, even though the footage captured by helicopter photographers looks close to the action, its generally due to a powerful zoom lens. So from the ground, "its very hard to hit a helicopter," 1,000 feet in the air.

A bullet did hit the rear tail stabilizer of the ship Torgerson was in when he delivered footage of a massive 1997 standoff between two bank robbers and hundreds of police in North Hollywood. Fortunately, the bullet had no impact on the helicopters ability to fly; the crew did not even discover the damage until days after the event. On live national television, he managed to capture the unfolding ordeal as the scene devolved into a shootout between the police and robbers. Several police were injured in the confrontation that ended after one robber was killed and the other turned his gun on himself.

Weather conditions can cause helicopters trouble. Among the worst are fog and high winds.

Many helicopter crews tell of near-disasters involving equipment malfunction or engine failure. But despite the danger, all spoke highly of the experienced pilots they work with and were philosophical about the dangerous potential of their work sites.

"Aviation in general is unforgiving when you make mistakes," said Fitzgerald, a former paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne who is also a helicopter pilot in his spare time.

Webster said Fitzgeralds bravery and quick thinking during a chopper crash earned him a lifesaver award from Local 45. While he and several other helicopter crews were covering the Academy Awards, another helicopter ran into technical difficulties. Keeping in constant radio contact, Fitzgeralds pilot accompanied the troubled ship back to the airport. Before landing, a loss of hydraulics caused the helicopter to drop 50 feet onto the ground. The pilot managed to escape but the camera operator was still on board as the ruptured gas tank caught fire.

"It was very traumatic to watch it and know that two of your friends are on board," said Fitzgerald, who risked his own life to pull his colleague to safety.

The adventure turned deadly for a former Local 45 member and KCBS reporter who was aboard a helicopter that crashed into the Persian Gulf off the coast of Iran in 2002. Shop steward and award-winning cameraman Larry Greene died when the rotor blade of a military helicopter he was riding in clipped the mast of a freighter and plunged into the sea.

With their birds eye view of life, "the perspective is very, very different," Fitzgerald said. "Eight out of ten people cant find their own house from that view point."