I guess whoever (or Whoever) hands out excitement decided that January had not already been an exciting enough month in Kenosha.  Here’s what happened yesterday morning on the northside of Kenosha, already shellshocked from the tornado that hit eleven days ago.

It’s about 7:36 and I am climbing the stairs of the Bio Sciences Building where WGTD’s studios are located.  As I got to the top of the stairs, Julie Whyte (the secretary to the president of the college) was coming out of her office with this look of utter shock and concern on her face – her eyes as wide as saucers.   “What was that?!?!?” she exclaimed  and asked.  I had no idea what she was talking about.  She said that she heard a loud noise from outside and then something actually shook the building.  Then she laughed and said  “and then you walked in!”  That made me think to myself,  boy I need to step up the weight loss program if I’m making the building shake just by walking up the stairs.

All kidding aside, something had happened- because when we walked into the radio studio, news director said that he felt it too.  They said it felt almost like something had physically struck the building- maybe a vehicle of some kind?  Maybe a portion of the building had somehow caved in?  Was it an earthquake?  They do happen around here but very rarely.   (But not as rarely as a tornado in January.)  We looked outside the windows and could see nothing amiss, at least straight to the east.

Then the general manager’s phone rang – he wasn’t in yet – and it was someone in the neighborhood who, I believe, happens to also be an alderman, who said that he and just heard a big explosion and saw a plume of smoke in the air just to the south of us.  At that moment,  Dave sprang into action, grabbing his tape recorder and my camera and running out the door, while I settled none too comfortably into the anchor chair to handle the next on-air break and presumably to put Dave on the air with a live report from the field.  This is 7:44.

Unfortunately at 7:45 I was scheduled to do a ten minute phone interview with two guys in New York City to talk about  – I kid you not – the United Nation’s Year of the Potato proclamation.  As the phone rang, I wondered how I was going to explain this- but I managed to sputter out something about an explosion in the neighborhood and that the news director and just left and I had to do his on-air weather break at 7:49, but that I could do the interview at 7:51 instead.   That was fine – and I hope they believed me. (I’m sure it maybe sounded to them like some sort of media extension of the My Dog Ate My Homework stories of years ago.)  So I do my break,  do my potato interview, finish that up literally seconds before I have to do the top of the hour newsbreak complete with a phoned in report from Dave.  (I was a bit rattled, I’m afraid;  I didn’t sound much like Walter Cronkite, I’m afraid . . . more like the on-air equivalent of someone juggling fine china, not quite breaking any dishes but not sounding exactly commanding and confident.)

It turned out to be an explosion inside a house very close to the radio station.  (We’re on 30th avenue and the house is – or I should say was – on 32nd avenue.)  They believe that there was a gas line leak and something ignited it in a huge explosion which completely destroyed the house and badly damaged the houses on either side of it – and the situation forced the evacuation of about a dozen homes in the neighborhood.   Miraculously, no one was in the house that exploded – and no one seems to have been so much as injured in the blast – but it shook up the neighborhood in more ways than one.

This brought back memories of a incident in Kenosha well over ten years ago when a gunman held hostages in a McDonalds on the south side of Kenosha.  That was before the days of cell phones or before we were hooked up to the internet,  so covering something like that was a completely different ballgame.  And that was an incident which sadly included loss of life,  so it was not the kind of exciting news day that puts a spring in your step.  That was a bad day – but it was still a day when it felt good to be one small part of the team telling a very important story.

Anyway, since yesterday’s incident was nowhere near as terrible as it might have been, I don’t mind saying that we scooped everyone on the story – it helps when it happens in your own backyard – but we will not mind one bit if the rest of January is dull as a dishrag.

Update:  Lynn Helmke just called to say that their story is now on CNN.com – – – and that a radio station from Boston called them this morning at 6 am for an interview.  Frankly, I’m amazed Lynn herself called me instead of her press agent.  (I assume she’s hired one by now.)