All three local affiliates were quickly on live and stayed with the story with live cut-ins
throughout the day.
"What looked like a possible bomb scare, became a confirmed explosive device," said
Cassidy.
A square mile around the tank was evacuated. Fire officials warned that one gallon of
methanol was equal in explosive power to a stick of dynamite.
Caution used in live reports
WAVY-TV News Director Dave Overton said when it was confirmed the bombs were
real, he was concerned with two things:
1. Getting on the air and quickly giving as much information as accurately as they could.
"We weren't concerned so much from a competitive point of view, but it was important
for the whole town to quickly know what was going on," he said.
2. Reporting only the facts. "If we didn't know something was a fact, we didn't say it,"
Overton stressed.
"While the networks and wire services were calling it a terrorist bomb, or implying it
was, we made the conscious decision not to report it as such unless we knew it was," he
added.
His instructions to reporters in the field: "If you don't know it, you don't say it."
"That should always be the rule for live reporting, but sometimes we are more conscious
of it than at other times. We bent over backwards to not play up the terrorist angle,
because we had no idea if it was a terrorist. It is not fair to the people who live here to
draw that kind of hysterical analogy," he stressed.
WAVY had a live picture of the scene from its helicopter.
WVEC hooked a camera on top of a large bank tower across the river and got a live
signal. Cassidy said, "We had a camera trained on the tanks from mid- morning
throughout the day. We wanted to have a live picture of what the scene was, but we were
also continuously rolling tape all day in case it did blow up."
It wasn't until late afternoon until the bombs were removed and safely detonated.
Tunnel closed, officials careful
Inevitably, when a bomb incident receives publicity, there are copycat calls.
The following day, there were more than six bomb threats before the noon hour. One
caller said there were two bombs in the tunnel linking downtown Norfolk and
Portsmouth. The tunnel was closed to traffic for three hours during the morning rush
hour.
