Here you can see my first major tornado that hit my last semester in college at East Carolina University.

I started my career in the 80’s and one of the first disasters I saw and covered for my college paper was a F4 tornado.  There were 16 deaths and 153 injuries. The tornado was up to 3/4 of a mile in width. Portions of East Carolina University were severely damaged. 300 homes were leveled, most in Greenville, NC.  My good friend Jesse Riggs lost family members that night.

No matter how many times you see disasters each time I feel a numbness come over me for the loss of life and property.  You are sad for those who are having to rebuild their lives.

On November 10, 2002, a tornado destroyed 50 homes. At least seven people were killed in the Morgan County community of Mossy Grove in eastern Tennessee. I was looking for an overall perspective up the mountain when I shot this photo.

The tornado cut a swath about a mile wide and a mile long.  The hard part when covering these disasters is showing items to give a sense of scale and what is destroyed.  Here I wanted to show the cars overturned for scale and what happened.

What always amazes me is the quickness of the national media on covering these events.

What I realized over the years covering these events is that the national media always took the time even in a disaster to get the best lighting for a shot.  Notice the hair light above the reporter in addition to the main light.  This helped to separate the reporter from the early dawn background.

Just hours before a tornado destroyed this community

The national media all find similar angles to show the destruction to their viewers.  Here you can see three networks all lined up for their early morning news shows.  I chose to shoot this to show how a nation was mourning for the folks.