Friday’s newspaper showed up on your doorstep or in your email inbox just like it normally does, but getting it there this week was a scorching hot reminder of just how wonderful the community is that we live in.
Around 6 p.m. on Thursday, the newspaper was put to bed, so to speak. The articles were written. We had one last minute story change on the front page that pressed our deadlines, but it was nothing out of the ordinary for those of us in a deadline business.
The paper was designed and sent to our press in the back. We’ve got a hulking machine that will take the digital PDF you ready online and literally press it onto a thin sheet of metal. These plates are then used as the basis that feeds into the printer that produces the paper. About halfway through the process, there was the sound of a “pop” and the power went out. It isn’t the first time this has happened–heck it isn’t the first time this has happened in the last month–but it is still frustrating.
We called the city and reported the outage hopeful it would come back up quickly and we could continue along our day. Those hopes were quickly dashed.
Thankfully, the curiosity of one of our pressmen, Juan Carrizales, got the best of him. He decided to walk around back to check on the noise he heard just before the power went out. About 10 feet behind the Daily Record office was a grass fire on the edge of a well overgrown field on the neighboring property that stretches most of the way from Interstate 35 to the Hays County Government Center.
The fire was only a few feet wide at this point, but it was on the other side of a fence from us. The 9-1-1 operator advised us to stay back and not to throw water on it, because it started as an electrical issue. The fire quickly grew from a few feet in diameter to around 40 or 50 feet. It neared another neighboring property where a home resides. It crossed our fence growing closer to the Daily Record office building. But, more seriously, it jumped backward into the field with five-foot tall grass just as the fire department arrived.
It had only been a few short minutes since the call was made, and the fire department’s quick response, as well as the luck of seeing the fire quickly, appeared to make all the difference in the world.
In my eyes, five more minutes would have meant a multi-acre fire sandwiched between the Daily Record, a neighborhood and the government center. It could have gotten serious very quickly.
It wasn’t more than a few minutes after the fire was put out that the city of San Marcos Electric Utility showed up. I felt it was a quick response especially given the fact that the call was initiated after hours.
The exact cause is unknown, but it is suspected that a vehicle up the road caught a lower-hanging communication line. That line pulled the pole behind our office, which in turn caused the transformer owwn the pole to spark.
To put the description given to me by utility workers into layman's terms, it was going to be a few hours before the power was back up.
Lucky for us, we’ve got friends in town. First, we packed up our main design computer and headed a few doors down the street to the Holiday Inn. The kind workers probably thought it was a little out of place to see a guy walking into the hotel carrying a computer, monitor, keyboard and mouse instead of luggage, but they didn’t blink. They walked me over to the hotel’s business center, and let me get to work. We called the New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung. Not only did they accept our paper without a second thought, it was darn near on the press by the time I could make it to their office. They had us out the door within an hour and a half or so of our cry for help.
Once back at the office, our insertion crew had dwindled to those who could stay behind. Circulation Manager Karen George made sure the crew had pizza from Rosie’s and Ben Harrison and Charles Guerrero prepped the papers for our carriers in the parking lot as the late summer sunlight faded into dusk.
In the end, we were a few hours behind schedule–and the power was still off–but the paper started its traditional trek across San Marcos and Hays County.
A little later that night as the lights turned back on, it was nice to know that, even in a minor moment of crisis, our friends and community are here to take care of us and keep the newspaper going.
I’m thankful for our staff and their hard work, the quick response of the firefighters and the utility linemen as well as our neighbors at Holiday Inn and the New Braunfels Herald Zeitung.
Without everyone’s help, the paper wouldn’t have gone out on Friday, much less possibilities had the fire reached our building, so I simply want to say “Thank you,” to our community. It was a pleasure to see it in action.
