75 years of KDKA-TV: Highlighting some of Pittsburgh's biggest breaking news stories
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- How often have we started our newscasts by saying "We begin with breaking news?" Well, the answer is "a lot"' because there's a lot of news to cover in Western Pennsylvania.
Today, we mark 75 years of broadcasting and as Ross Guidotti shows us, KDKA-TV has been there on the scene of it from the very beginning.
In September 1953, a man climbed to the top of the Smithfield Bridge, intending to jump off. Astonishingly, WDTV photographer Charlie Boyle climbed up there with him and eventually helped to bring him down safely.
In April 1956, TWA Flight 400 crashed near Greater Pittsburgh International Airport, killing 22 people. There were 14 survivors and Bill Burns interviewed them in their hospital beds at Sewickley Hospital.
Nearly 40 years later, KDKA was on the scene on another horrific plane crash.
USAir Flight 427 crashed on approach to Pittsburgh International in 1994, killing all 132 people onboard.
In 1979, KDKA was on the air within hours after the accident at Three Mile Island.
"Officials have declared an emergency at the crippled Three Mile Island nuclear power station near Harrisburg," said Patti Burns.
We broke into programming in 1988 when an Ashland Oil storage tank near Jefferson Hills split open, spilling millions of gallons of oil into the Monongahela River.
And we stayed on air for hours on end in 2011 during the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
We've reported on countless local crimes that have made national news from the Richard Baumhammers murder spree in 2000, the killings at LA Fitness in Collier Township in 2009, the stabbing spree at Franklin Regional High School in Murrysville in 2014, and in 2018, the tragedy at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Squirrel Hill.
We were here to help Pittsburgh navigate that day, as well as some of the city's other darkest days, including the deaths of two sitting mayors in Richard Caliguiri, who died in 1988, and Bob O'Connor in 2006, as well as the murders of three Pittsburgh Police officers in Stanton Heights in 2009.
We've been here for some rather miraculous times as well, like in 2002, when a group of nine miners survived being trapped in the flooded Quecreek Mine in Somerset County for more than 78 hours.
Twenty years later, another miracle took place when nine people survived the collapse of the Fern Hollow Bridge with five vehicles and a bus on it at the time.
We've traveled around the world on assignment.
Harold Hayes was in the Midde East during the first Gulf War.
Mary Robb Jackson was in Vietnam twenty years after the fall of Saigon, Ray Tannehill reported from Russia, and Patti Burns visited the Vatican with a group of local Catholics on a pilgrimage.
Marie Torre, Harold Hayes, and Staci Smith also made trips to the Vatican at various times and Stacy even had the opportunity to meet Pope John Paul II in person.
In 1991, Stacy also went to Israel with a group of local Jews on a trip called 'Homecoming 91.'
Sometimes, the news came to us, like when a water main break in 2005 happened just outside the KDKA studio, leaving us flooded.
Part of KDKA's legacy was built on covering politics, like in the late 1960's when Bill Burns and Al McDowell interviewed an unemployed actor named Ronald Reagan as he began a new career in politics.
Over the years, we've reported from several national political conventions and also hosted many local candidate debates.
KDKA has also had a local commitment to groundbreaking medical news, from covering Dr. Jonas Salk's work on the polio vaccine in the 1950's to Dr. Thomas Starzl's work on organ transplants in the 1980's, to 2018, when a local man became the first patient in the country to receive the first new treatment for ALS in twenty years.
You couldn't even begin to name all of the celebrities and dignitaries we've interviewed here over the years, but some highlights include the Beatles at the height of Beatlemania, as well as Nelson Mandela, Prince Charles, Jimmy Carter, Louis Armstrong, Joan Crawford, Oprah, Christina Aguilera, and Stevie Wonder!
All of that history still doesn't even make up a fraction of what we've covered over the past 75 years, all made up of really important moments in history for both the Pittsburgh area and for KDKA-TV.
