Anchor Mike McCormick and photojournalist Aaron Smeltzer were out covering the dangerous weather conditions in Polk County, North Carolina when a tree crushed their news van, the station reported. Both men were killed.
“The ground is saturated,” Geoff Tennant, the fire chief in Tryon, North Carolina, told reporters Monday evening as the rain storm caused by subtropical Alberto continued to pound the area.
The incident occurred around 2:30 p.m. Tennant said the news crew was driving on Highway 176 when the tree collapsed on the vehicle.
“It is a freak of nature,” he said of the collapse. “You know it’s going to happen, you don’t know when.”