My (Content’s) 15 (Seconds) of National News Fame

**A plume of black smoke, shown on *NBC Nightly News*, was a telltale sign of a wildfire fighting tragedy at Yosemite National Park.**

Welcome to the Non-Linear Career Musings Blog! You’re reading the inaugural post. The blog will include reflections from yours truly — and perhaps others — about navigating non-linear career paths in today’s working world.

This post is a bit off the course I see the blog taking, but it’s a career reflection nonetheless. Specifically, I don’t think I’m the only one whose work has gotten in my blood so much that I’ve relied on my skills and experience outside of work to make a difference. Regardless, I’m sure you’ll find this story of my work-related brush with fame (actually, infamy) interesting.

Beyond merely reading the post, feel free to share your own WRBF in the Comments section below.

For purposes of commenting, your WRBF should have either:

1. Occurred while you were ‘on the clock,’ including business travel, or

2. Involved use of your professional skills or experience while you were off the clock.

Now, for the story…

The Setting: Yosemite National Park

Back in the 2010s, I and a couple of buddies, from Seattle and Los Angeles, met up in Yosemite National Park in California for a vacation. The parents of Jim from Los Angeles had owned a cottage inside the park for many years, so not only did we get into the park for free, we also had free lodging. Not a bad deal. Also, because both practiced law, I figured, should any unforeseen legal issues arise, I was in good company.

The cottage was located in Yosemite Valley, the most human-populated area of the park with campgrounds and similar dwellings. The accommodations were old but comfortable. After days of long hikes on trails such as John Muir and viewing awesome rock formations such as El Capitan and Half Dome, as well as massive Redwood trees, we’d hang out and just shoot the breeze. It was a great trip.

I’m not sure why — maybe in case of an emergency — I brought my laptop with me. Our cottage did not have Wi-Fi; however, at some point, I discovered that I could get a signal (and no need to enter a password) from one of the neighboring cottages.

Although it wasn’t for an emergency, as it turned out, both my laptop and the Wi-Fi would come in handy. Next, I’ll explain why.

Wildfire Management Seemed Interesting

As awesome as Yosemite is, its main attractions — the rock formations — are located on either end of Yosemite Valley in a relatively small area. By the last full day of our stay, we had run out of sightseeing attractions to check out and, while we could have looked up more trails, we had already hiked a ton. I was dreading the end of my vacation and my departure the next day, with all of the wonderful aspects of air travel. Anyone who has ever gone out of town on a vacation can relate, I’m sure.

Jim had already gone back home, leaving my other friend, also named Don, and I to close up the place. With some time left by afternoon, we were looking for something different to check out in Yosemite. Then it hit us.

California was in the midst of an epic drought — we could practically walk across the dried-up Merced River, located just a few hundred yards from the cottage — and several wildfires blazed throughout Yosemite during our entire stay, a concern, yet pretty far away from the populated areas. During our sightseeing, we had noticed some firefighting planes flying around. We figured it might be interesting to focus in on pilots trying to put out wildfires from the air for a while.

Heading back from a scenic overlook we had visited a second time, we looked off into the distance and saw a large wildfire on the side of a mountain and a few planes flying around. The shoulder of the road was wide enough to park on and a partial clearing in front of us looked flat and sufficiently free of vegetation to cover on foot.

Camera at the Ready

I guess I was a little more interested in the scene than Don was. While he hung back, I walked a few hundred feet. A ranger was up ahead — I figured he was from the U.S. National Park Service. From his communication with someone on his walkie-talkie, it sounded as though he was spotting the fire from the ground and giving instructions.

I stayed a distance from the ranger and focused my digital camera on the fire, which must have been a couple of miles in the distance. I had a pretty interesting view of the action from my location. Occasionally, planes flew over the fire and dropped massive sheets of water or a red substance that must have been a flame retardant.

I got a few shots of the fire and planes in the same frame — what seemed like decent additions to many other photos I had taken of Yosemite’s beautiful rock formations and waterfalls. What happened next was unexpected, to say the least.

‘It Can’t Be Good’

Somewhat mesmerized by the scene in front of me, I kept my camera trained on it and my finger on the shutter release button. Suddenly, I saw one of the planes heading into dense smoke and straight for the side of the mountain in the background. I waited to see water or flame retardant spill out of the plane, but it never came. The plane just disappeared for half a second. Then, I heard a loud BOOM! that undoubtedly echoed throughout much of Yosemite. I thought to myself, “Whatever that was, it CAN’T be good.”

A split-second later, a huge plume of black smoke rose amid white smoke from the water and retardant that had been dumped on the nearby wildfire. With my finger still on the shutter release button, I pressed it. Waiting for the shutter to close, I pressed the button again. The plume of black smoke kept billowing upward and I managed to get a couple of shots of the black smoke, a telltale sign that the plane had crashed into the side of the mountain.

From the communication between the ranger and his fire-control contact, I concluded that the plane had, indeed, crashed. From the tone of his voice and lengthening intervals between his communication with his contact, I sensed melancholia. I, too, felt a sobering sense of reality set in.

Reporter Instincts Kick In

On the way back to the cottage, it occurred to me that we might have witnessed a big story. My journalist’s instincts kicked in and I felt a sense of duty to get the story out.

The wheels started turning in my head. Without a doubt, the news outlet with the widest reach had to be the Associated Press. I figured I’d upload my photos to my laptop and study them in a larger format than through the back of my camera. Assuming my photos appeared to be of high enough quality to use in news content, I’d submit them to AP.

The two images I captured of the scene a split second after impact, while not necessarily Pulitzer Prize winners, looked good enough to submit. The first showed the black cloud just beginning to billow upward. The second, zoomed in, showed a more fully developed cloud and would turn out to be the one that told the story visually.

I was used to taking my own photos when I developed ‘application stories’ for a geospatial positioning technology provider a few years earlier, when I ran my own media relations and content marketing consulting business. Having captured the only images of the crash a split-second after it happened, I was reminded me of work I had done as a consultant. On several occasions, I spent a day with customers such as excavation and grading contractors, who had recently adopted my client’s technology, and took photos of them working. If I didn’t save my data and back it up, the story wouldn’t make it to the trade media in the form of a bylined article.

Having sponged off of the neighboring cottage’s Wi-Fi, I found the California AP office site and noodled around for a link where people could submit news tips. I found one and uploaded my images and details of what I had witnessed via a form. I recall thinking that this was a pretty big story, one that otherwise might not receive as much coverage without my ‘citizen journalism.’ That assumption would turn out to be correct.

Helping AP Develop the Story

Shortly afterward, my cell phone rang. It was a reporter from AP, following up on the contact information I had left on the form. She confirmed that I had taken the photos and then asked me what I had witnessed. I told her that, based on the fact that I was probably two or three miles away from the crash, I couldn’t give her much detail. Still, I told her what I had seen. Plane flying toward mountain. Plane disappearing in haze of smoke. Loud boom. Billowing black cloud. Ranger’s dialog confirming crash.

Small world—she noted that I had listed West Dundee, IL as my residence. Turns out she grew up in Northbrook, IL, less than an hour from where I lived at the time. Because she was working, and on a deadline, she never even mentioned her first name. Based on her dogged interviewing approach, though, my sense was that she was an ambitious, tough-minded desk editor who had a bright future in the business, which has changed since then. I’ll just leave it at that.

The Story Gets Out

AP got a story out quickly and outlets such as The Los Angeles Times published their versions of AP’s story a few hours later. As it turned out, the plane was an S2-T tanker, a military ‘submarine-chaser’ converted for firefighting use and a mainstay in the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection’s fleet. The tankers were used for ‘first strikes’ against wildfires to clear fire lanes so firefighting crews could get close enough to battle the blazes from the ground. The S2-T had hit a canyon wall, scattering debris on the highway near an entrance on the west side of the park, forcing the road’s closure. A search party found the remains of the pilot, Geoffrey “Craig” Hunt, 62, of San Jose, a Cal Fire contractor for 13 years and a U.S. Navy veteran. Hunt was the sole occupant of the S2-T.

Turns out, this was a big story because, although fighting fires from the air is dangerous work, there had not been a Cal Fire airplane crew fatality for 13 years prior to this one. That’s a testament to the crews’ bravery, skill, and professionalism.

By the following morning, CBS This Morning picked up the story and had published one of my photos, among other images. That evening, the same photo was used as the backdrop for an NBC Nightly News segment about the crash and a recent development — an honor guard ceremony for the removal of the pilot’s remains from the scene.

The Power of the Pen, Demonstrated

Nearly three years later, Cal Fire announced findings from the final National Transportation Safety Board investigation report. The cause of the crash: pilot error. It turned out that Hunt was flying at a very low altitude and, while attempting to avoid contact with a tree on his right, he struck other trees with his left wing. A crew member of another tanker fighting the fire said he saw the left wing of Hunt’s S2-T shear off before the plane crashed into the canyon wall.

While the investigation was underway, Cal Fire’s director pointed out that aerial firefighters’ work is inherently dangerous and hoped that the agency could use the findings to limit the dangers. He added that Cal Fire owed that to Hunt, who gave his life to protect people from wildfires.

Besides reinforcing a safety message to the aerial firefighting crews, I’d like to think that I helped draw public attention to the importance of aerial firefighting, which might lead to increased funding or recruitment. Even in the age of information overload, the power of the pen can be transformative.