 "Photo: Mandy Derfler")
BEAUMONT - Reporters sit elbow to elbow in a frigid conference room pressed into service as a temporary newsroom in the 80-year-old Beaumont Enterprise building.
Hurricane Rita left the newsroom on the third floor uninhabitable.
The newspaper's building suffered several hundred thousand dollars of damage, but repairs should be completed sometime in February.
The Enterprise printed eight sections in a reduced run at the San Antonio Express-News in early October and cut back its press run until Oct. 10 when about 60 percent of the population returned to Beaumont, editor Tim Kelly said.
"The entire ceiling began collapsing on the desks," associate managing editor Sheila Friedeck said, during a tour given for journalism students from this college.
"The windows were bulging," she said, noting the newsroom windows were rated to withstand 200-mph winds.
During a renovation in the early 1980s, the original skylights were discovered, she said.
The skylights survived the storm.
The room housed the original linotype machines, and the skylights were intended to vent heat from the molten lead process, Friedeck said.
Some of the staff that did not evacuate as Hurricane Rita was approaching had taken to sleeping in the photo studio, Friedeck said.
The building was thought to be a safe place.
Then the third floor started flooding.
"It was a finger-in-the-dike exercise," she said. "We had problems with leaks before the hurricane."
The staff then started moving computers out of harm's way on chairs, she said. "We were about to get new computers anyway."
The water leaking into the newsroom brought a horror-movie effect with it.
"It was really kind of disgusting. The rust on the pipes made it look like blood running on the floor," Friedeck said. "It got hot and nasty in here."
The staff staying behind was given instructions to bring their own bedding and resources to be self-sufficient, she said.
Kelly said, "We were in survival mode at the time - not printing mode. I sent a copy desk setup to Houston."
The only phone lines working at the time were two that did not go through the paper's phone system, he said.
"The whole roof flapped away," Kelly said.
"It was a Rube Goldberg setup," he said, referring to the newspaper cartoonist whose drawings depicted complex machinery designed to perform simple functions. "We tried to run the computers off of car batteries."
The primary source of information dispersal became the paper's Web site and a reader blog, Kelly said.
"It's a blur after the initial stage," he said. "We had no printers, no carriers and no readers."
The readership of the paper was not even in Beaumont, he said, with most evacuating to areas inland.
"We saw the shallowness and lack of depth of TV coverage," Kelly said.
"People felt better about us, tended to be nicer about us," he said.
It took three days to get generators for the paper's building, Kelly said.
Fifteen journalists remained at the paper, including four or five photographers, he said, with eight in Houston with the copy desk setup.
"There was no plumbing, OK?" Kelly said. "Two Port-a-Potties filled up pretty quickly."
There were supplies, such as ice and water, brought in for the remaining staff by the Houston Chronicle, he said.
But many of the staff chose to evacuate, Kelly said.
"We gave the option for the staff to stay or go," he said. "Many made the choice to evacuate."
Some of the staff that left reported on the evacuation, Kelly said.
"We made a number of mistakes," he said, adding the experience will help better prepare the operation for the next storm that comes through.
The cell phones continued to work, and there was no major flooding, Kelly said.
"There was a lot of journalist macho crap going on," he said, alluding to journalists who believe they are invincible while on the job.
"In hindsight, you can't just bull your way through a situation like this," Kelly said. "You have to divide your troops - figure out who to send with what skill sets."
The disaster management plan in place at the Enterprise also was put to the test, he said.
"It was a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants exercise," Kelly said. "There's no way to cover every contingency."
The systems at the paper were backed up weekly, he said.
Data retrieval was not a critical issue for the paper.
The critical data for the paper is stored at the Hearst Tower in Charlotte, N.C., he said.
"The business side of the paper was in Charlotte," he said. "Things needed to run the paper could be found around here."
The paper's microfilm archive was also saved, he said.
"The experience was harder for the advertising department," Kelly said. "People in advertising aren't as flexible."
For another reporter, Beth Gallaspy, the aftereffects of Hurricane Rita had a more personal impact.
"Our family's home had 3 feet of water in it," Gallaspy said. "Ninety percent of the structures in Pascagoula, Miss., were damaged."
Her mother evacuated to Beaumont, then Gallaspy drove her back to Pascagoula when Hurricane Rita became a threat, she said.
Gallaspy stayed in Baton Rouge on the way back to Beaumont, calling in stories on the way.
There are a few things Gallaspy will add to her list for the next storm. "Next time, I'll have more gas, more Gatorade, a cooler and a battery-operated fan."
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