Take a look at Diana Williams' first WABC report as she retires after 29 years

ByEyewitness News WABC logo
Wednesday, September 11, 2019
Diana Williams' first report on WABC -- January 4, 1991
On January 4, 1991, Diana Williams made her Eyewitness News debut with a report on an AT&T network meltdown that caused big headaches for New York in this pre-cell phone era.

NEW YORK (WABC) -- Diana Williams is retiring on Thursday after 29 years at WABC, and we're honoring her remarkable career at Eyewitness News.

As we looked through decades of tape, we figured where better to start than with her very first report on Channel 7.

It was January 4, 1991, and she got right to work on the biggest story of the day. An AT&T technician accidentally cut a fiber-optic cable in a dark underground vault in Newark. The embarrassing case of human error had huge implications for millions of people -- it brought down the long-distance network, halted trading on Wall Street and even caused flight delays at airports.

Remember, this is 1991, long before cell phones and the Internet changed how we live. A failure in AT&T's long-distance network could disrupt life and business for millions, and Diana Williams was all over the story on her very first day on the job here at Eyewitness News.