Editor Describes How Oregon Paper Got Out in Big Storm

By: Patrick Webb, Managing Ed., Daily Astorian (via AP) It is a newsroom legend here that I am on vacation when big stories break. Not this time. When the Big Wind hit our scenic but rugged Oregon coast on Dec. 2, I was in the newsroom, stopping by to check my e-mail on a nonpublication Sunday.

That casual visit turned into an exhausting but exhilarating week in which The Daily Astorian (circulation 9,000) reinvented itself and its 50 staff bonded like soldiers in foxholes.

The reporters, editors and photographer were heroes, but they will share their medals with people from production crews, secretaries and drivers, advertising sales staff, just as they shared snacks, clean socks and aspirin.

Even the janitor, Tom Grimm, earned a photo credit. We live in a wind-swept and barely discovered corner of the Pacific Northwest where Lewis and Clark camped for a rainy winter in 1805-1806 before declaring "mission accomplished."

Fans trek to Astoria from Europe and Asia because "The Goonies" was filmed here. It is home to boutique hotels, an avant-garde theater group, and Victorian Craftsman-style homes that their Baby Boomer owners spend a frustrating lifetime fixing up.

Rain and sleet saturated Astoria and nearby Seaside and Cannon Beach Saturday Dec. 1. As winds accelerated Sunday, Dec. 2 we activated the breaking news section on the top of our Web site, www.dailyastorian.com, and veteran reporter Sandra Swain and I filed copy, forecasts, warnings and safety tips. I reserved a motel room; I would not return home for seven nights.

The big blow blacked out the newsroom in central Astoria at 10:07 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 2. Electricity would not return until 1:58 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 6. Old-timers would later say the storm had equal intensity but longer duration than the Columbus Day storm of 1962 that is legendary in the Pacific Northwest.

Winds reached 127 mph at Cape Meares near Tillamook, to the south.

To date, four people have died. Reporter Kara Hansen, who flew in a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter, took photos that showed giant trees scattered like tangled matchsticks over 20 miles. Monday, Dec. 3 dawned and like 22,900 Pacific Power customers we woke up in the dark.

Publisher Steve Forrester, a veteran newsman whose fourth-generation family owns a group of seven papers, made the decision to skip Monday's print edition. For Day 2, it would be Web first, print second. Although local readers could not log on, other media, out-of-town subscribers and faraway family members were thirsty for news and anxious about relatives. Comments streaming in through our Web site came from as far away as Australia.

Although our disaster is nothing like the scale of Katrina, we had learned from the Times-Picayune's Web site, which played a key role alleviating fears. "Thank God this newspaper is online and keeping me updated with the developments," one wrote to us. "I still worry about Mom & family but feel better knowing the progression of events and the work being done to restore power, etc. to the area."

Operations Manager Carl Earl, an unflappable computer-nut who can fix anything, dragged out a gas-driven generator and hooked it to my Macintosh. We lit candles and loaded batteries into lanterns to read our notes in our Dilbert-like cubicles. His wife, Laura Sellers, the newspaper group's Internet guru, was already feeling the byte.

With seven newspapers and Web sites, it had seemed a good cost-saving idea to base five out of seven in one locale, and yes, Astoria is the prettiest. Sister papers stepped up. Erik Hidle, the eastern Oregon online content leader at the East Oregonian, in Pendleton, Ore., some 200 miles inland, and kept stories flowing to The Daily Astorian site during the first couple of days.

A Pendleton-based corporate board member, Kathryn Brown, took my dictation for first full local story Hidle posted in a rare moment of cell-phone service on the day after the storm. Once one lane of the debris-littered U.S. Highway 30 was cleared, Sellers drove 47 miles to Longview, Wash., Tuesday and camped out in the Super 8 motel for three days posting copy to the Web sites.

Mailroom Supervisor Debra Burnett drove through the mayhem of sinking roads, receding flood waters and felled tree limbs to deliver one day's worth of copy by CD to Sellers and coastal online content leader Crindalyn Lyster drove there the next day with video and pages from the company's nearby weekly, the Chinook Observer of Long Beach, Wash.

The corporate business model for the Salem, Ore.,-based East Oregonian Publishing Group has been paid Web sites. That changed in a blip. All the storm coverage was free online and each edition was posted in PDF format.

The Tuesday, Dec. 4 edition was paginated in a darkened newsroom, then driven east to Longview where our nearest daily newspaper, the rival Daily News, printed 7,000 copies which were trucked back and loaded into racks. A cluster of residents littered the sidewalk outside our Astoria office with cigarette butts for more than two hours waiting for the first editions.

The pattern continued all week as reinforcement reporters arrived from our Salem-based agricultural weekly, the Capital Press. Web sites were updated regularly. Afternoon editions changed to mornings; it was odd to think our rivals were helping us.

Deputy Managing Editor Sue Cody and I ended our shifts at 10 p.m., having arrived in the newsroom at breakfast-time. Reporters Cassandra Profita and Joseph Gamm reported on snafus with the phone service, county cleanup operations and even quoted mental health professionals to help people cope.

For much of the week, Seaside-based reporter Pamela Robel, stranded 18 miles away, could only communicate by text messages. Daily I would drive three blocks to the converted house that is headquarters of KMUN, a community FM radio station still broadcasting despite a giant tree embedded in its roof.

There, manager Dave Hammock and newsman Dave Paul and I would interrupt All Things Considered daily to chatter soothingly on the air about the day's developments. It was not a time for shrill voices. The bright spots were people helping neighbors. The local governments were not prepared, but like any army, the sergeants and lower ranks simply took charge in the field.

Wizened gentlemen with World War 2-vintage ham radios provided communication around the region and inland. My Page-1 headline was inevitable: "Local radio hams save county's bacon."

Power came on in time for our Friday edition, which we published early to give carriers more time to deliver it. The week ended with a rare Saturday morning edition. Forrester, our publisher, who is an old movie fan, insisted it scream "EXTRA! EXTRA!" above the fold. The lead photo by Mark Rozin showed a father bottle-feeding a six-week-old child. The two-deck, four column, 75-point headline was straight out of my long ago tabloid past: "Hold on, little baby, help is on the way." We were declared a federal disaster area 12 hours later.

Saturday, Dec 8., dawned with sunshine. As a chill breeze ruffled the Columbia River into tiny whitecaps, a rusty red-and-black grain freighter COS Orchid passed under the towering Astoria-Megler Bridge at about 9 a.m., having crossed the Pacific from Huanpu, China, en route for the Port of Portland. Commerce continues. In its wake, a 38-foot fishing vessel owned by David B. Hubbard of Astoria chugged out from the Port of Astoria pier and headed out. That vessel's name was CFV Katrina.

On the storm-battered north coast of Oregon, life goes on, with all its ironies.