Toughest Scene

As the days passed by, I was gaining acceptance as another co-worker around the office. I was treated as an employee, and performed as an authorized reporter for the newspaper. Two weeks into my internship I was not only responsible for a daily live-broadcast event for the web, but also for a news- package. I was to get the official information from the authorities, the interviews and opinions from the people involved, and later edit the package and publish it on the website. It got to the point I really wished they were at least paying for my transportation fees.
What I thank the most about the experience is the field work I was pushed to do. As a reporter, I was not to decide where to go or what news to cover, rather I was assigned to go out on the streets and encounter different headline events, mostly negative, crime-related news, and deal with them in a professional manner. Here is where I found the real challenge. I describe three of the toughest days, a couple examples of very heavy news I was presented to.
On Sunday June 20th, at around 8:00pm, a group of gangsters intercepted a public transportation unit. Menacing with taking everybody’s life, they pointed a gun to the bus driver and asked him to turn right into a dark, quiet, neighborhood street. One of the kidnappers shot the bus driver and his assistant, one of the gunshots encountered a little girl sitting in one of the front seats. The rest of the gang started to empty gasoline cans on the passengers. As soon as they all came out of the bus, they set it on fire, with its passengers inside. They looked as they burnt, they heard their victims scream for help, and even shot some of the brave ones who tried to escape from the flames through the melting windows. Fourteen people died almost immediately, consumed by the flames, including a 15-year-old and an 18-months-old baby girl. Three more victims died in the way to the hospital.
I was not on call to report on spot that Sunday, but I was to edit the images that Monday morning. It was for me one of the most traumatic situations of my life. The president could not but declare this assault an “act of terrorism,” which was condemned internationally.
And this was not the end of it. After covering the facts and showing the powerful images of that night, we were to work on the human side of the story, on hearing the testimonies of the people who survived and of those who lost someone in the cynic crime.
I was pushed to act up as a professional reporter, to keep my feelings and thoughts to myself, to cover them up with a mask of gentle empathy and serenity. I was to represent a non-partial agent, and get the most painful information from the victims, no matter what I had to do to get it. One of the hardest things I thought I would ever do.
Forensics had the toughest time trying to identify the bodies of the victims. They were unrecognizable, yet not charred to ashes; the accelerated decomposition process of the remnants was a problem. The chief of Forensics found it hard to deal with the families of the victims. These people would stay at the main doors of the building all day long, waiting on information of their missing relatives, on a confirmation that they were dead. I covered the story of one of those relatives, the grandmother of one victim and mother-in-law of another.
Here is a link of the video I produced that Monday.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vrLGo2vau8