Fiscus rescue attempt
The Fiscus rescue attempt refers to a tragic incident that occurred on April 8, 1949, when three-year-old Kathy Fiscus fell into an abandoned well while playing in San Marino, California. This heartbreaking event sparked an extensive rescue operation that lasted for over fifty-two hours, with emergency workers and volunteers digging shafts in hopes of saving her. Despite their efforts, Kathy was found deceased on Sunday evening, shortly after the fall. The incident gained significant media attention, with local newspapers and radio stations reporting on the unfolding situation. Notably, KTLA, a local television station, provided live coverage for 27.5 hours, marking a pivotal moment in television history by demonstrating its capacity to inform and connect the community during a crisis. The Fiscus tragedy underscored the potential of television as a medium for live news reporting, moving beyond mere entertainment to engage viewers in real-time events that affected their lives. This event is remembered not only for its sorrowful outcome but also for its impact on how news was disseminated in the era of early television.
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Fiscus rescue attempt
The Event Struggle to save the life of a three-year-old girl who had fallen down an abandoned well
Date April 8-10, 1949
Place San Marino, California
Although the effort to save Kathy Fiscus’s life failed, the event captured national attention and demonstrated the power of on-the-spot, live television news coverage of dramatic events.
Early on Friday evening, April 8, 1949, three-year-old Kathy Fiscus fell into an abandoned water well while playing with her sister and cousins in an empty lot in San Marino, California. Emergency workers and volunteers dug shafts around and toward the narrow well in the hope of rescuing Kathy. After fifty-two hours, they reached her on Sunday evening, only to find that she had died shortly after she fell.
The rescue effort was covered by newspapers and radio as well as two local television stations, KTTV and KTLA. KTLA canceled all scheduled programming and broadcast live from the scene for 27.5 hours. Two years earlier, KTLA had broadcast live coverage of an industrial explosion, but at that time there were fewer than four hundred television sets within the station’s range. By 1949, there were an estimated twenty thousand televisions in the area, and the story therefore reached a far greater number of people.
Impact
Television had always provided news reports, but not extended live coverage of exciting and dramatic events. Because of the Fiscus tragedy, people realized that television could provide more than entertainment or sports coverage; it could inform an entire community and unite thousands over a single event.
Bibliography
Chambers, Stan. KTLA’s News at Ten: Sixty Years with Stan Chambers. Lake Forest, Calif.: Behler, 2008.
Morrison, Patt. “The Little Girl Who Changed Television Forever.” Los Angeles Times, January 31, 1999, p. 9.