I had just completed the pre-flight inspection on AirStar6 and moved the aircraft out of the hanger onto the pad. I headed up to the station and about half way the Nextel goes off and our assignment desk was on the line and she told me to head to the pad, we have an apartment fire in east Charlotte.

As soon as I lifted off the pad I could see the smoke, over 12 miles away, thick black smoke. We arrived on scene within two minutes.

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I took a glance around and we beat the other two station’s helicopters, and this market is extremely competitive as far as news helicopters go. This also adds to the excitement of my job trying to beat the other TV stations to any given scene.

Ok back to the fire, the call went out about 10 minutes before we took off and by the time we arrived the fire had burned the entire roof off. This was obviously was a hot, fast burning fire.

It turns out a construction crew had hit a gas line with a back-hoe sparking this raging fire.

The assignment desk called over the two-way and said, "Our reporter has not arrived yet we need you to do a talk back with the anchors.” At the top of the newscast I did Q&A with Tiffani Helberg to explain what was taking place over the fire.

We were promptly cleared from the scene and we made our way back to the station.