Where There’s Smoke, There Are the Traffic Reporters of Los Angeles

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Flying high above the fires charging across Los Angeles on Thursday afternoon, Mark Kono, an airborne traffic reporter, noticed that the 101 freeway was suddenly crammed with cars.

He slowed the Airbus AS350 he was flying down to 60 knots. From above, he could see charred power lines that had fallen onto the highway and crews scrambling to de-electrify them. He readied his live shot and descended to an altitude of 1,500 feet.

Into the smoke.

“You could breathe that smoke coming through the air vents. You’d feel like if you were to cough you would be coughing ash,” Mr. Kono said a few hours after he and Rich Prickett, the camera operator, filed their report for KTLA Morning News. “But if we can get the shot, we’ll do it.”

As flames have ravaged Los Angeles, traffic reporters have emerged as lifelines through the chaos, stars in an urban, multi-fire battle that could compete with a disaster film plotline from a Hollywood studio. Their profession, sidelined in the age of apps and built-in navigation, is boosted by the thing technology still does not have — human judgment.

Reporters have spent days navigating people home and keeping them out of harm’s way, with guidance beyond the turn-by-turn. Where a road might appear open on an electronic map, it might in reality be under a miasma of smoke too painful for breathing. A side street may seem passable, but just out of sight, a fire could be barreling down.

Unlike a pileup or a road closed for construction, the blazes are also a breaking news event, throwing traffic reporters into the same mix as their news anchor counterparts, said Sioux-z Jessup, a freelance traffic anchor.

“What’s really challenging is that there are so many fires burning right now, and I am trying to get the most accurate information to the most amount of people,” Ms. Jessup said. Along with street closings and alternate routes, she said, she has spent days posting tips on Twitter, like the safest kind of gas mask to wear. “You want to give them the evacuation centers, and the school closures, and the wind conditions,” she said. “I’m trying to provide anything that they need.”

At 3:10 p.m. on Thursday, Ms. Jessup went live on the air. “Folks, we have now six fires burning in Southern California,” she said, facing the camera. She rattled off the closings, followed by a list of evacuation centers and the number of structures and acres threatened by a fire that had erupted that morning.

The conditions have introduced tremendous reporting challenges. The buffeting winds of up to 60 mph that have fed the fire have grounded some traffic aircraft. Only the hardiest helicopters (more expensive ones usually operated by television stations) can withstand the current air conditions, said Desmond Shaw, who reports for both radio and TV. It has been too dangerous to fly the Cessna he reports from for KNX 1070 radio since the fires ignited. Like many of his colleagues, he must cover the story from the ground this time.

“I definitely feel kind of hamstrung or helpless,” he said. “My city is burning and people are trying to get out of town and I wish I could be up above that helping people out.” Instead, he and other reporters work the phones, monitoring reports from the state Department of Transportation and Cal Fire.

The news feeds flickering on viewers’ screens across the state — stark pictures of amber flames licking across mansions, horse farms and highways — belie what the reporters went through to capture them, Mr. Shaw said. “The shot is steady, but you’re not seeing the chopper getting knocked around because of the stability controls the camera has,” Mr. Shaw said. “Meanwhile you’re getting knocked around by turbulence like crazy.”

Los Angeles is a city of gridlock. But the fires, which have consumed more than 100,000 acres and are still raging, create an entirely different traffic scenario. “You can Google and look in Hollywood and see these are the closures for the Oscars,” said Ginger Chan, a KTLA traffic anchor. “The difference is it’s fluid, it’s changing, the wind can shift, it can pick up.”

Ms. Chan said officials from the Los Angeles Police Department had warned reporters on Wednesday that app-based GPS risked taking drivers into fire-affected areas. “For people who are not familiar, they are kind of trusting this blindly,” said Ms. Chan, who is married to Mr. Kono, the traffic pilot. “You’re running into a situation that will change on a dime, and then it’s putting you in areas that could be danger zones.”

On Thursday afternoon, Ms. Chan was picking up her twin 3-year-old children at school after a workday that began at 1:30 a.m., extended hours for round-the-clock fire coverage. Few of the city’s veteran traffic reporters said they had ever dealt with so many simultaneous fires.

“It’s indescribable,” said Scott Burt, an airborne traffic reporter for the radio station KNX 1070 News Radio. “I have seen this before, to a certain degree, but not probably this extreme.”

The work is taxing, but rewarding, he said. “That’s what I’m here for, to help people,” Mr. Burt added. “And who doesn’t at work like a good challenge?”