Tested in the Crucible, TV Stations Prove Their Mettle

It looked like much of the region was trapped inside a fiery Hindenburg.

And during this period when huge chunks of the outlying metropolitan area appeared to be in flames or reduced to ash, Los Angeles television stations came through like they’ve never come through before.

From early morning to early evening Wednesday, station after station gave local viewers a live monolith of fire in what was probably the best, most courageous spot news coverage in the history of the city’s local TV.

There they were, showing what they could do, commercial stations providing public television.

Except for KCOP-TV Channel 13, which provided intermittent coverage plus a two-hour special late in the afternoon, the city’s network affiliate and major independent stations gave the fires nearly continuous coverage. And they did so either commercial-free or with very few commercials. That loss of revenue, plus the cost of the extended coverage, added up to a small fortune for each station.

KCBS-TV Channel 2 was probably typical. General Manager Bill Applegate estimated that Channel 2, which ran no commercials after 6 a.m., had lost “tens of thousands” in ad revenue by late Wednesday afternoon. And he added that extending the live coverage straight through prime time to midnight could run the tab to “hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

Applegate chalked it up to public service. “This is the primary reason we exist in the true sense. This is the kind of event, tragic as it might be, that television excels at covering.”

From choppers to reporters and camera crews on the ground, amen to that.

In superimposing a map of Southern California over live footage of a screen-filling inferno late Wednesday afternoon, KABC-TV Channel 7 provided a horrifying metaphor for the spreading holocaust that Channel 2 anchorman Michael Tuck earlier had so vividly captured with descriptive terseness: “Buildings . . . gone, portions of people’s lives . . . gone.”

Also gone, at least for the moment, were memories of local TV’s often inept and inflammatory coverage of last year’s Los Angeles riots. This story has required different skills.

“There goes a tank! It’s gonna go! Look at that power line! Oh! Wow! This is building up! Dave, pull back a little bit!” That was Channel 7’s wheezing, retreating Joe McMahon late in the afternoon, speaking to his camera operator. Both were so close to a fire destroying a Laguna Beach mobile home park--beaming back incredible pictures and sounds--that you could feel the heat.

Victims provided their own emotion. For example:

“Oh, look at the sparks--my God!”

Seeing her family’s house destroyed by fire Wednesday morning had been too much for the Altadena woman, who rested her head on her daughter’s shoulder and cried softly. Then composing herself, she said, “Twenty-six years of marriage gone. We worked so hard.”

Also in Altadena, a young woman appeared through the smoky haze surrounding her endangered home. She said, “I’m pregnant, and I’m supposed to be in bed resting.”

Much later in the day, a Laguna Beach woman focused on a distant hill where flames were enveloping a home she feared was hers. The scene had an ironic familiarity. “It’s like looking at television,” she said, “but it’s really you.”

Times staff writer Daniel Cerone contributed to this story.