Fires Drive 'U-T' Editor Back From Mexico

By: Joe Strupp When the Southern California wildfires flared up Sunday, San Diego Union-Tribune Editor Karin Winner was in Tecate, Mexico, having just begun a week's vacation. After hearing about the devastating blazes, which many are calling the state's worst-ever firestorm, Winner tried to get back immediately, but could not since the only roads from the Mexican town to San Diego were closed until early Tuesday. When the corridor opened, she hitched a ride with a Mexican mail truck, taking just the clothes on her back and leaving her luggage behind.

"I'm going to go back and get my belongings tomorrow," Winner told E&P Online Thursday. "I just brought what I was wearing. I had no idea what I was walking into so I did not want to bring anything with me."

Still, the veteran editor says her efforts to get home were nothing compared to the extra hours and struggles her staff have been enduring to put out the paper each day. With nearly half of the newspaper's 410 editorial employees working on some aspect of the fires, the Union-Tribune has had all hands on deck, with the overtime likely to continue through the weekend.

"Almost everyone has had a role in this," she said of her editorial staff. "We have a guy in sports writing about the outdoors, all of the business folks have been working the story and they are getting really good stuff," she said. "This is a story where people are coming in after they have been evacuated from their homes and are sitting down to write a story."

At least 25 Union-Tribune staffers had been evacuated as of early Thursday, Winner says. She added that at least two non-editorial employees lost their homes in the blazes.