This Can't Be Good

I covered a fire on Monday. Pretty basic really, just your run of the mill house fire. Except this was a pretty smoky fire. I got to the scene, took my camera and tripod and headed around the back end of my live truck.

I turn the corner of the truck and look up just in time to see a wall of thick black smoke headed right at me and nowhere to escape. I took a deep breath of fresh air and held it as the smoke enveloped me. My eyes stung and watered as the toxic smoke worked it's way into my nose, eyes and eventually my lungs as I ran out of clean air.

I shot the fire, even got them reviving a dog with oxygen, in between coughing jags but I thought I'd be ok after a few hours. I was blowing black crud out of my nose and coughing up black crap for the rest of the day.

Well, two days later, I'm still coughing up black crap...

That sucks..

A Night At The "Still Mill"

I grew up in Pittsburgh which in it's heyday was known as the steel capital of the world. Today however,my hometown is now a technology and medical city. I'd never been in a working steel mill(pronounced still mill to you non-Pittsburgh people) while working in Pittsburgh. I've driven by a few, the closest was the Edgar Thompson works in Braddock, PA but never been inside an actual working mill. Until yesterday.

All this week, I've been shooting these stories, "A Night At....". Basically a take off on the movie A Night At The Museum. We've been showing the things that come alive at night when you are asleep. Last night Obie, my reporter, and I shot at the A.G. Mittal steel mill here in downtown Cleveland.

It was fascinating to say the least. What I didn't expect was to be able to feel the heat radiating off these slabs from so far away. Things are kinda hot at 2000 degrees even when doused with water and being flattened into giant rolls of steel.

Another thing I didn't count on was waking up this morning with aching sinuses and blocked nasal passages. Pardon me for being graphic here, but I've been blowing out black crap today every time I blow my nose. I really don't know how the guys that work these mills can stand it. Maybe they're so used to it by now. God bless them for dealing with it. Lord knows, I couldn't.

I just want to be able to breathe normally again and stop expelling the black crap out my nostrils.