Yellowstone Videos -- Clips of the 1988 fires

April 21, 2016 Posted by: Sarah Marino, 2015 Library Intern

 Follows: Yellowstone Video -- Faces of Yellowstone

Poor Dan:

In a recording of the KUSA Denver News coverage of the 1988 fires, we follow a reporter named Dan Dennison who is located at Old Faithful when the fires surround the area. This poor guy does a pretty good job staying calm and reporting on the “orange glow” the strong winds, and the fact “there is no way in or out of here right now.” This leads his presumably much more comfortably stationed coworker to say “I hate to bring this up but…is there an evacuation plan for all of you?” Dennis responds that he and his team had previously been reassured by the Park Service that the fire would not reach this intensity in this area, but now that it had the road was closed and that was all he knew. Now, in this situation, there were a number of reassuring or at least sympathetic things that the anchor could have said. Of all of those things, he decided to go with “That’s incredible, Dan. If they did have to evacuate out of there, there would be millions and millions of dollars of television equipment just sitting ready to cook!” I believe this shows an excellent sense of priority; that video equipment sure would be difficult to replace. Good old Dan just went with the flow though, despite looking pretty nervous. Don’t worry, he made it out just fine.

In a recording of the KUSA Denver News coverage of the 1988 fires, we follow a reporter named Dan Dennison who is located at Old Faithful when the fires surround the area. This poor guy does a pretty good job staying calm and reporting on the “orange glow” the strong winds, and the fact “there is no way in or out of here right now.” This leads his presumably much more comfortably stationed coworker to say “I hate to bring this up but…is there an evacuation plan for all of you?” Dennis responds that he and his team had previously been reassured by the Park Service that the fire would not reach this intensity in this area, but now that it had the road was closed and that was all he knew. Now, in this situation, there were a number of reassuring or at least sympathetic things that the anchor could have said. Of all of those things, he decided to go with “That’s incredible, Dan. If they did have to evacuate out of there, there would be millions and millions of dollars of television equipment just sitting ready to cook!” I believe this shows an excellent sense of priority; that video equipment sure would be difficult to replace. Good old Dan just went with the flow though, despite looking pretty nervous. Don’t worry, he made it out just fine.

Dan Rather reporting from the Yellowstone Fires

KUSA (Denver) Fire Newsclips [Electronic Resource]. (1988). United States of America. 

Last updated: April 21, 2016

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