Meteorologist continued live report even as fire broke out in studio

A devoted meteorologist continued giving live tornado warnings even as a fire broke out in his studio.Noah Simmons was on CBS affiliate KFSM-TV around 8 p.m.Saturday when a studio light caught fire — forcing the meteorologist to use his shirt to cover his nose as a haze filled the studio at the station’s headquarters in Johnson, Arkansas“We just had a fire in the studio, but we’ve got two tornado warnings, so we’ve got to keep tracking this and covering this live,” Simmons told viewers as he bravely continued his broadcast.The recent University of Missouri graduate later said he felt something was wrong as soon as he started broadcasting while alone in the studio.“I first saw the lights flicker, and I thought that was odd.

About five seconds later, I started to smell smoke,” Simmons later said in a Facebook livestream.He quickly spotted the light on fire.”That’s when I walked off camera a little bit and kind of said, ‘Guys, we have a fire happening in the studio right now,'” he recalled.Alerted by those words, station producer Trevor Branham rushed in and put out the small blaze with a nearby extinguisher, creating the fumes and haze that Simmons mostly shielded his face from, rather than the actual fire.“It was a little tough to breathe — that’s why I had my shirt over myself — but when you’re tracking two tornado warnings at the time, I felt there was a need to keep going,” Simmons said of his devotion to his viewers.“If there’s a tornado warning, you’ve got to keep folks safe, and you’ve got to keep them up to date,” he said, adding that he “quickly determined I was not in any immediate danger and could continue overage that would keep our community safe.”No one was injured in Saturday’s blaze, but Simmons said he suffered minor throat irritation triggered by the fire extinguisher.The meteorologist and his producer, Branham, were praised by their station boss, 5NEWS President and General Manager Van Comer.“...