Busy day

I woke up earlier than usual Tuesday, June 6, 2006. Around 6 a.m.

(I guess that makes it 6 6 6 06. SCARY.)

We had a big fire in Great Falls. I couldn't leave our office, but made some phone calls to get it in the papers by deadline. Our publisher took some pictures on his way in to work. So we got it first. We actually had our first UPDATE about the fire on the web before other papers had their first story.

All during a day when I wrote 10 other stories (couldn't get them all in, of course), had a candidate for governor AND a candidate for a state house seat drop by for a little "pre-primary" chat, ALL while dealing with moving from paste up to digital transmission of our pages as .pdfs. Down a reporter, and our Great Falls editor, whose town was in trubba, was on vacation.

So I got to the fire locale by about 7 p.m., it was still burning, stayed till after 9 p.m., and was up until 2 a.m. writing what I think is the most complete story so far on the fire.

The next morning, I woke up about the same time as day before, so I was a litle light headed. But Patricia told me to send out links and share the story to friends, so I did.

I put up the photo gallery that morning from home, and before heading back to work.

As the fire chief said, "I'm so tired."

http://www.onlinechester.com/Great_Falls_Fire/

We've had the most compete coverage of any paper in our online edition. Getting it just two days a week in print is a bit of a drag.

The fire continued for almost a week. It's out now, an investigation is going on. We are the only newspaper so far to print a story about what happened at that same mill two years ago. We reported it two years ago, and reported the possible ramifications in our Wednesday paper.

It's been, as I said, a busy two weeks. We had both regular and special primaries on Tuesday this week, a runoff will be held as well as an election protest. A company that in many ways put the town on the map annouced it was closing two plants by February and 760 jobs will be lost.

Had to get all that, too.