A KTVU reporter and his cameraman were shaken but otherwise unscathed after a deadly scare Tuesday morning in Fremont as they were reporting on the Altamont Corridor Express train derailment.
Reporter Alex Savidge moved out of the way just in time as a white car careened out of control and crashed near the corner of Mission and Niles Canyon boulevards around 7 a.m. Cameraman Chip Vaughan also avoided the mayhem, which happened as the TV station showed video from the train’s derailment the previous night while Savidge did a live report.
“I’m starting to come back a little, but yeah, I’m still a little shook up,” Savidge said via phone later Tuesday morning. “We were doing the live shot, and the video was showing. I’m reading the script off my phone, and I heard a screech out of the corner of my ears. And right then, I heard Chip yell, “Watch out!'”
Savidge then darted to his right-hand side, as the car roared by him to his left. The station posted the near-hit captured by Vaughan’s camera on its Facebook page.
“I don’t know how close it was, but it was too close,” Savidge said. “I saw the video. Seeing it made me realize how lucky I am.”
Savidge, 35, is a five-year veteran of the station who reports live from breaking news scenes. He said his safety and that of his crew also is his top priority but that he never imagined that they’d be in harm’s way after setting up shop in a 7-Eleven parking lot in the 38000 block of Mission Boulevard.
The crew tried to do it’s live shot farther into the canyon near where the ACE train derailed, but Savidge said the live equipment failed. The crew moved to where it could find a signal and settled on the parking lot of the 7-Eleven.
“It’s kind of a generic backdrop, and away from everything,” Savidge said.
Savidge went back on the air shortly after the scare to let viewers know he was OK. Anchors Gasia Mikaelian and Dave Clark also appeared to be shaken by the turn of events.
In August, KTVU reporter Carla Liu was reporting live when a reporter and cameraman for KNTV were robbed at gunpoint.
Savidge took the rest of the morning off, and said he is unsure if he will return to the air Wednesday.
“I say it a lot,” he said. “Photographers have our back in many, many ways, and this was just the ultimate proof of that.”
Police details from the crash were not available immediately.