Blair Returns from Afghanistan
By Martha Slater

Rochester native Adam Blair, video photojournalist for the CTV network, on assignment in Afghanistan.

One night, several weeks ago, television news photographer Adam Blair was editing a news story, when he heard the distinctive whistle of an incoming mortar shell.

"We could tell it was nearby," Blair remembered. "The reporter I was working with yelled ‘duck!’ and we all hit the ground. It landed about 100 yards away."

Blair who works for the Canadian television network CTV, arrived back in U.S. Friday, Sept. 14, after spending five and a half weeks covering the war in Afghanistan. He spent his time in Afghanistan living on the NATO base in Kandahar, in the southeastern part of the country.

On the base, Blair lived and worked in half-moon shaped "weather haven" military issue tents shared with other media personnel. On many nights while he was there, the Taliban would launch mortars at the base from the mountain ridge nearby.

"The main base in that area was constructed by the U.S. military and some other countries to house and service the airfield (KAF)," Blair explained. "It was basically a town that housed several thousand soldiers from all over the world. It even had a Burger King and Pizza Hut, although the plumbing didn’t always work!"  

One incident that Blair recalled somberly was when a crew from CTV’s network competitor CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corp.) was out doing a story and the armored vehicle they were riding in hit an IED (improvised explosive device), which then blew up.

"The photographer lost part of his leg and the blast also killed two Canadian soldiers and an interpreter for the Canadian Army," Blair said. "That really shook all of us up, because it could have happened to any one of us. And after that time, our desk would decide not to send us out on certain stories."

Blair has happier memories, too.

"Once we did a story at the base hospital where I met a 13 year-old boy who had tuberculosis that had crushed parts of his spine so badly, that when he took off his shirt, you could see parts of his spine making huge lumps protruding under his skin," Blair said. "The doctors there, who were mostly Canadian, were operating on him because one of the military personnel had noticed the boy’s problem and brought it to the attention of the hospital staff. One of the doctors there happened to be one of Canada’s foremost experts of spinal surgery. He contacted a number of companies and medical supply organizations and they FedExed $300,000 worth of medical supplies for the operation."

Blair found himself very impressed by the boy’s father, "who was one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. He was the kind of person who had nothing, but would give you anything he could. When we weren’t filming, we would communicate with hand signals and we could tell how worried he was for his son."

The operation was a success and Blair was happy to report that the boy can now walk normally, adding, "If he hadn’t had the operation, he would have eventually been paralyzed."   

Blair noted that, "Every day was different, and we just tried to turn a story for the national newscast. The time there was eight hours ahead of our assignment desk in Toronto, and our deadline for the national news is 10 p.m. EST. Due to the time difference, we usually talked to the assignment desk back in Toronto when it was 6 p.m. in Kandahar, so it was 10 a.m. in Toronto. Then we had another 12 hours to put together a story. We started our days early and they ended pretty late."

A 1997 graduate of Rochester High School, Blair is spending this week visiting with his family in Rochester and Hancock, before returning to his present home base in Washington, D.C.

Before he leaves the Green Mountains, Blair will be the subject of a piece done by his previous employer, WCAX-TV in Burlington. A feature story about his experiences in Afghanistan is expected to air on that station’s evening news broadcast at the end of this week.