Sometimes the mind is the last part of you to retreat, and depending on what it holds on to, that can be good or bad.
This week marks the 37th anniversary of their deaths, and yet the memory of their young faces – of the first responders who tried so desperately to save them but couldn’t – still haunts me.
Four children… the oldest of them 3… are gone.
That August morning in 1987, photographer Russ Bauman and I, working in the newsroom at WFAA-TV in Fort Worth, were already on assignment. I can’t remember what it was. I remember driving east on Interstate 30 in Arlington, and I remember a radio call at about 10:30 a.m. directing us to an apartment fire on Maple Street. We drove south on Center Street into downtown Arlington. We couldn’t see the smoke, but the sirens of the approaching fire trucks were unmistakable.
As we turned onto Maple Street, we saw the first truck stop in front of a two-story, light-colored building. Very thick, very dark smoke was pouring out of a second-story window. The firefighters had already placed a ladder under the window. One of them immediately ran up and disappeared inside.
Neighbors gathered around us as more fire and rescue equipment arrived. From the murky smoke still pouring out the window, the sleeve of the fireman’s protective jacket appeared. In his hand he held a very small child, head thrown back, obviously unconscious, and his clothing appeared to be covered in what looked like soot. At the top of the ladder, a second fireman grabbed the child and handed him, who was not yet of school age, into the eagerly waiting arms of potential rescuers.
They wasted no time and laid the child, who appeared to be a little boy, on the ground to try to resuscitate him.
It was hectic. There was rescue equipment everywhere and more was arriving at any moment. Then I looked up and saw a second unconscious child being pulled from the inferno.
Then a third.
And a fourth.
The thick smoke did not let up. Firefighters and rescue workers were all over the schoolyard, feverishly tending to the children. One was massaging his chest with his two fingers, others crowded around him.
They did everything they could, but despite their efforts that morning, four children were killed: a 6-month-old, a 17-month-old toddler, and two 3-year-olds. Three other children and their teenage babysitter were injured but survived. Fire inspectors suspected the children had gotten their hands on matches when the babysitter went to the bathroom. She later told them that the bathroom door was stuck and she had trouble getting out.
Because we arrived just minutes after rescuers, we had captured the brave actions of the firefighters and the desperate attempts of the rescue crews to bring the children back to life. Our competition had not yet arrived to cover the story. But there is an important difference between acquiring the images necessary to tell a story, even a tragic one like this, and using the images.
In some countries, that line doesn’t exist, and the most gruesome images find their way onto television screens and newspaper front pages. Even here in America, that line can vary from newsroom to newsroom.
We decided not to show most of the video we shot that morning on the evening news. It was a way to convey the scale of the disaster without exposing viewers to images that would be forever etched in their memories and those of the rescue workers.
Two families had lost their children. Four innocent children would never see kindergarten.
The final expressions on the faces of those little children – the prayers and the dejected faces of the firefighters who could not save them – still haunt me, and rightly so.
Some would say ignore it. I have always seen it as a necessary price to pay for maintaining my humanity – a crucial requirement of being a journalist.
To a far greater extent, first responders carry the same kind of internal grief with them every day, standing between danger and the rest of us. Many carry this burden for the rest of their lives. In fact, it likely contributes to the higher suicide rate among police officers, firefighters, emergency responders and others, according to a study by the Journal of Security Research.
I have worked as a broadcast journalist for more than four decades, most of that time in the Dallas and Fort Worth television market. Every news team wants to break the news every day – to be the first on the scene of a story. That rarely happens. And when it does happen, and children are among the victims, you are left with permanent scars.
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