Gustav has come and gone through Lafayette, leaving in his wake widespread power outages and uprooted trees. Majestic, once tall, proud Live Oaks are dethroned, pushed to the ground by the bully on the school playground. Correspondent Jonathan Serrie is doing lives from one of many locations just like that. Chainsaws will make firewood from one of these huge oaks that may last as long as the hundred years or more that the mighty oak had been growing.

Our assignment this trip has been to service our Fox network affiliates. It can be a grueling pace in the best of circumstances, but throw in some tropical storm force winds and rain and it’s a recipe for exhaustion. The affiliate service is called “The Edge.” Jonathan provides live coverage for individual market stations throughout the country often doing as many as twelve live hits in an hour. Every hour. Hour after hour. Fox television stations from coast to coast. Remembering station call letters. Remembering station co-anchors. Laura and Mark, Allison and Steve, Jack and Jill… or was that John and Jill?

On any given story when doing lives for Fox News Channel we typically will do one or two hits an hour. Our producers Dan Gallo and Brooks Blanton work behind the scenes coordinating these continuous live shots and juggle phones better than any circus clown. At least they have a fall back career path! They do a remarkable job taking care of all of the crews needs including hotels, food, public relations with “unfriendlys”, writing scripts, helping with video feeds… thier tasks are too numerous to list them all. We have the absolute best field producers in the business at FNC and they’re an integral part of what us “the big dog”!

For the state of Louisiana Gustav was a test. From the lessons learned from Katrina there have been remarkable gains in levels of preparedness on the part of both officials and residents alike. Residents heeded the warnings and evacuated and officials were able to better concentrate on handling this potential disaster. Gustav was no Katrina, but he provided the guidepost to lead gulf coast residents as they further prepare for the NEXT big storm… and there will always be a next storm. Hannah here we come!

1:30 p.m. : Many times circumstances of being in the field requires a bit of Macgyver to keep us on the air… and it always seems to happen when the weather is at it’s worse. The dish is controlled by electric motors that pan and tilt the dish (antenna) for tuning onto the satellite.

My motors decided to evacuate. For any of you you who have ever tried tuning your own DirecTv receiver you’ll understand how “interesting” it can be to try to locate the satellite. Try it with a dish that weighs acoupla hundred pounds… while winds are blowing and gusting 30 to 40 mph around you! Mother being the necessity of invention, there’s a new baby tool in the world today! Vice grips inventor is a proud papa.

As far as the storm goes, as of 1pm Eastern we are still awaiting the major brunt of the storms punch in the Lafayette area. Off and on rains are laying the wet carpet for Gustav’s imminent arrival.

The kind folks here at the First Baptist Church of Lafayette have shown us that Louisiana hospitality that makes this area a great place to visit… more so when the party is for something other than a hurricane!

Go Tigers!

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Hi all — I’m staff in the SE bureau located in Atlanta. I split duties between Sat truck/photog/field tec/field producer/ coffee maker! (I’m also in charge of the candy jar!)

We’re primarily a breaking news bureau and we stay pretty busy. Most of our time is spent in our region but we are sometimes sent to other areas depending crew/staffing needs. I’m exciting about blogging and letting you guys know the ins and outs of our “normal” life in the field!