Tragedy after tragedy in Chatsworth

Good morning, it’s Wednesday, Sept. 16, and you can expect highs in the low 80s and sunny skies.

They were no strangers to horror, having covered earthquakes, wildfires, wars and bombings. These are people who have long made their living translating the worst the world has to offer into nightly updates beamed into living rooms across the Southland. 

But Tuesday night was different for the reporters, producers and anchors of NBC 4, who found themselves contending with the likely, then confirmed, deaths of their own colleagues while live on the air. 

First there had been the traffic carnage in Chatsworth: An SUV smashed into a Metro bus killing three and injuring five others, with firefighters rushing to the scene to try and extricate victims. News helicopters hovered over the wide San Fernando Valley intersection, broadcasting the twisted vehicles and gathered onlookers staring. Then just before 7 p.m., there was an explosion blocks away, and a massive plume of smoke.

Robert Kovacik, a two-decade veteran of NBC 4, sped from the site of the bus crash toward the explosion, which was believed to be a helicopter crash.

“We know it’s something bad, just judging from the smoke,” NBC 4 anchor Colleen Williams said as Kovacik rushed closer to the black plume and made sure his cameraman was rolling. 

“I just saw a colleague of mine from another — from ABC in tears and concerned,” Kovacik told viewers at 7:07 p.m. as he tried to make sense of what had happened. “We don’t know where this chopper is from. … My colleagues are telling me that it’s not from their station. We are just giving you the information as we have it.”

Kovacik — a reporter who has been at the scene of countless massacres and disasters, and once had an alleged murder suspect turn himself in during a live broadcast — calmly narrated through the chaos as emergency personnel and other reporters rushed around him.

But soon Kovacik and the journalists back at the station would start to put together the awful pieces.

Conan Nolan, a political reporter who had just celebrated his 40th anniversary at the station, took to the air.

“We can’t confirm anything other than a television news helicopter has crashed,” Nolan told viewers. “We can tell you that we are not in contact with our television news helicopter.”

If it was, in fact, their own colleagues in the fiery crash, it wouldn’t be the first time such a tragedy had befallen the station, Nolan said.

The last time a news helicopter in Los Angeles was involved in a fatal crash was nearly 50 years ago, in 1977, when an NBC 4 chopper crashed near a Little League field in Encino after running out of fuel.

Cameraman George Spears and pilot Francis Gary Powers were both killed. Powers had earlier been involved in an even more famous crash, when in 1960 the U-2 spy plane he was flying over the then-Soviet Union was shot down. Powers was held prisoner for nearly two years before returning to Los Angeles, where he eventually got work as a news pilot.

After the crash Tuesday evening, NBC reporters and anchors remained live on the air for roughly two hours, offering what information they could while awaiting confirmation of the unbearable news they seemed to already know to be true. 

“We've been kind of numb out here,” Williams said. “Perhaps realizing what did happen out there, but still we don't have confirmation on it.”Conan

Just before 9 p.m. Williams returned to the screen: “We can now confirm that the chopper that went down in Chatsworth tonight, about two hours ago, was in fact News Chopper Four.”

“We are going to take a couple of minutes to think about that, to process, and to regroup,” Williams said, before the live coverage ended. 

At least three people were killed in the helicopter crash, with at least one of those individuals on the ground at the time of the incident. 

Later in the 9 p.m. hour, the station cut away from the semifinals of a star-studded talent competition show to return live to the scene in Chatsworth, where Mayor Karen Bass and local officials spoke about the horror of both the evening’s tragedies. 

“I’m thinking about those who are in the hospital now, who we hope recover, and then just the tragic loss. When moments like this happen, there really are no words,” Bass said, before walking away from the microphones and pulling Kovacik into a long hug.

At the top of the 11 p.m. broadcast, Williams and anchor Carolyn Johnson reported the names of their colleagues who had died in the crash: pilot George Marciniw and reporter Eliana Moreno. For the rest of their night on the air, the NBC 4 team alternated between remembering their colleagues, sometimes tearfully, and continuing to cover the story.

IT’S A NO FOR L.A., DAWG: “American Idol,” which has filmed in Los Angeles for 25 years, is moving to Atlanta for its upcoming season. The L.A. Times report notes that “The Masked Singer” and “Shark Tank” have also made plans to relocate out of state.

ANOTHER NYT LIST: The New York Times released its list of the 50 best restaurants in the U.S. Three L.A. spots made the cut. 

WHERE THERE’S FIRE: After future California wildfires, insurers will be on the hook to pay for smoke-damage testing and cleanup, thanks to a suite of bills signed Tuesday by Governor Gavin Newsom designed to ease wildfire recovery.

SEQUINS DIMMED: In the New Yorker, Rachel Syme has a sharp assessment of the designer Bob Mackie, who died Monday at 87. Mackie was so famed for the spectacular get-ups he designed for Cher and other Hollywood legends that he once won an award, invented just for him, for “fashion exuberance.”

For today’s peek inside our member-only forum, @hunterowens has a micro-review of A Tí in the #i-was-here channel:

AND FINALLY… A poem to pair with your morning coffee:  “A Black Kite” by W.S. Merwin.