I wish I had a generator

[Precious Roy]

So a semi ran into a power pole behind our offices, leaving us all in the dark. The power company is saying that it could be midnight (central time) before they restore power to our part of town. We don't have anything in the way of power to get work done and are four pages away from being off the floor.
I am so pissed off right now. Had I a generator, then we could power up the systems and get things done.
However, we are in the dark and I am hammering this out on the company laptop so I can watch the ticker for the score of the NBA game to get ready for the wild rush when things come back on.
Sorry to rant, but this sucks.
Any others have stories like this?

 

[MacDaddy]

I once worked in a newsroom where the emergency backup power was set up to power only certain areas of the newsroom -- all the places where there was no one at night (features, art department, etc.), while the layout and copy desks were all dark with no computers. Good times.

 

[Precious Roy]

We finally got back power and are now off the floor, a good hour and 15 minutes past get your ass chewed deadline.
Again, this was quite the bogus night.

 

[buckweaver]

We finally got back power and are now off the floor, a good hour and 15 minutes past get your ass chewed deadline.
Again, this was quite the bogus night.

Had a tornado knock out power for 6 hours in the newsroom one night. Think we got it back around 10:30, and somehow got a complete paper out in two hours. Pretty crazy stuff. Nice adrenaline rush, too.

 

[albert77]

We ran on generator power for eight days after Katrina came right over us. Best investment the company ever made. We didn't miss a day and did some of the best work any of us will ever do with that thing puttering away almost non-stop.

 

[e_bowker]

We ran on generator power for eight days after Katrina came right over us. Best investment the company ever made. We didn't miss a day and did some of the best work any of us will ever do with that thing puttering away almost non-stop.

We were without power for only two days when that beast hit. Thank goodness. We already had the generator, but since nobody on our side of the Mississippi River had power a lot of our news clerks were sent out on fuel runs. There were hourlong waits at the stations that had power and gas.
We powered up three or four computers -- one for news, one for sports, one for production -- and had extension cords running all over the place. We were basically producing a paper by flashlight. When the time came to print, a paper in another town was gracious enough to let us use their press.
Our paper's owner had one of the last houses in town to get power restored, more than a week after the storm. He was sleeping in his office at the paper, and he and his wife had a steady stream of food cooking (the stuff from their refrigerator) for everyone for most of that week.

In the years since Katrina, we've had to go to a similar production set up a couple of times when bad weather has come through and knocked out power. Having been through that, it's nowhere near as stressful now -- although it's still a big headache.

 

[SoCalDude]

Had the exact same thing happen many years ago, car knocked over a power pole outside.
Unfortunately, it was a Friday prep football night.
I had already set the type for one of our six pages. There was a photo taken of me in the backshop holding a flashlight for the pasteup guy. The waxers didn't work so he used spray-on glue to stick down the type.
Later, a few of us from the newsroom drove to our competitors' office about 25 miles away. I produced the rest of the section on a computer system I had never laid eyes on before.
As for the preppies, we had one remote terminal. They corraled everybody and went to the City Editor's house. He still had power. They quickly typed in each story, filed to the other paper and I was down there to put it all together. We blew off the agate.
I felt a lot of pride that night, overcoming a significant problem to produce a passable product. But it was a pain in the ass.

 

[Del_B_Vista]

I stood outside with the publisher during the eye of Hurricane Georges trying to repair a broken fuse holder on our big generator.

 

[JBHawkEye]

After a summer when we had six power outages near deadline because of thunderstorms (and a less-than-prompt response from the utility company each time), we got a generator.

It has saved us quite a few times since then. A couple of years ago, when an ice storm knocked out power to most of the town for about 36 hours, we kept working without any problems.

 

[txsportsscribe]

I stood outside with the publisher during the eye of Hurricane Georges trying to repair a broken fuse holder on our big generator.

i wonder if the publisher would've ponied up if you'd been injured doing that.

 

[Paper Guy]

I was snowed in at my apartment this past January with no power. Ended up filing stories remotely by calling someone (not at the paper) and dictating my story to them. It was a nightmare (the not having power and not being able to leave for 72 hours, not the dictating, which was unpleasant at worst).

 

[KG]

We ran on generator power for eight days after Katrina came right over us. Best investment the company ever made. We didn't miss a day and did some of the best work any of us will ever do with that thing puttering away almost non-stop.

Stupid question, but how in the world does the paper even get delivered when there's enough damage to knock power out that long in an entire area? We have enough issues when a tornado has touched down nearby, I can't imagine if the entire region had taken that kind of beating.

 

[albert77]

We ran on generator power for eight days after Katrina came right over us. Best investment the company ever made. We didn't miss a day and did some of the best work any of us will ever do with that thing puttering away almost non-stop.

Stupid question, but how in the world does the paper even get delivered when there's enough damage to knock power out that long in an entire area? We have enough issues when a tornado has touched down nearby, I can't imagine if the entire region had taken that kind of beating.

Not a stupid question at all, KG. It was tough. Obviously, there were a lot of rural areas that we simply couldn't get to, and some areas in town that we weren't able to reach until the streets were cleared. We did a ton of rack sales and even set up a table right on the street in front of the office where we sold a lot of papers to passers-by. Also, our website got hits that numbered in the hundreds of thousands every day. In fact, all the papers in the area set up pages where people could post inquiries for loved ones and we were able to take calls from people in the area to post information on their whereabouts.

 

[apeman33]

In 13 years here, we've lost power three times.

1) A huge wind storm knocked out the main power supply line to town and it took two days to fix. We printed in the neighboring town. It was also then that we leaned our phones won't work in a power failure because the relays within the building need electricity.

2) Big downtown fire. Our building wasn't harmed but they had to cut the power to all downtown. Again, printed in the neighboring town. This time, we had to lug the computers over because they didn't give notice before they turned the power off and we didn't get a chance to burn CD's. I missed that one because the high school basketball team was at the state tournament.

3) Two weeks ago, a big storm passed through. This was the first incident since we switched to mornings. Our publisher brought her husband's generator and, wouldn't ya know it, just 5 minutes after we got everything hooked up and running, the power was restored. She was stunned that the professional guys who hooked all our new comps together two years ago didn't include some kind of power backup.

 

[KG]

We ran on generator power for eight days after Katrina came right over us. Best investment the company ever made. We didn't miss a day and did some of the best work any of us will ever do with that thing puttering away almost non-stop.

Stupid question, but how in the world does the paper even get delivered when there's enough damage to knock power out that long in an entire area? We have enough issues when a tornado has touched down nearby, I can't imagine if the entire region had taken that kind of beating.

Not a stupid question at all, KG. It was tough. Obviously, there were a lot of rural areas that we simply couldn't get to, and some areas in town that we weren't able to reach until the streets were cleared. We did a ton of rack sales and even set up a table right on the street in front of the office where we sold a lot of papers to passers-by. Also, our website got hits that numbered in the hundreds of thousands every day. In fact, all the papers in the area set up pages where people could post inquiries for loved ones and we were able to take calls from people in the area to post information on their whereabouts.

Thanks, albert. After I lost my job to cutbacks, I took a part-time job as a carrier to make ends meet. That has now led me to management in home delivery, and tornadoes wreak havoc on our routes, making my job a nightmare. I can't leave it up to the carriers to try to find ways around everything, so I get stuck out for hours and hours trying to get to any customer I possibly can. I've climbed over fallen trees and walked unbelievable distances to get papers to as many subscribers as possible. Sometimes being dedicated sucks.

 

[greenlantern]

We ran on generator power for eight days after Katrina came right over us. Best investment the company ever made. We didn't miss a day and did some of the best work any of us will ever do with that thing puttering away almost non-stop.

Stupid question, but how in the world does the paper even get delivered when there's enough damage to knock power out that long in an entire area? We have enough issues when a tornado has touched down nearby, I can't imagine if the entire region had taken that kind of beating.

Not a stupid question at all, KG. It was tough. Obviously, there were a lot of rural areas that we simply couldn't get to, and some areas in town that we weren't able to reach until the streets were cleared. We did a ton of rack sales and even set up a table right on the street in front of the office where we sold a lot of papers to passers-by. Also, our website got hits that numbered in the hundreds of thousands every day. In fact, all the papers in the area set up pages where people could post inquiries for loved ones and we were able to take calls from people in the area to post information on their whereabouts.

Thanks, albert. After I lost my job to cutbacks, I took a part-time job as a carrier to make ends meet. That has now led me to management in home delivery, and tornadoes wreak havoc on our routes, making my job a nightmare. I can't leave it up to the carriers to try to find ways around everything, so I get stuck out for hours and hours trying to get to any customer I possibly can. I've climbed over fallen trees and walked unbelievable distances to get papers to as many subscribers as possible. Sometimes being dedicated sucks.

At that point, I think the customers would just have to deal with a missing paper.

 

[Del_B_Vista]

We ran on generator power for eight days after Katrina came right over us. Best investment the company ever made. We didn't miss a day and did some of the best work any of us will ever do with that thing puttering away almost non-stop.

Stupid question, but how in the world does the paper even get delivered when there's enough damage to knock power out that long in an entire area? We have enough issues when a tornado has touched down nearby, I can't imagine if the entire region had taken that kind of beating.

Because we weren't publishing on site (because of loss of water pressure, not loss of power) following Katrina, the days papers were making it here midday from being printed in Columbus, Ga. We had absurdly early deadlines so they could get our paper printed and on the road before theirs rolled, so we'd take stacks of papers and go stand in the middle of intersections and hand them out. We'd take them out the next day and throw them on driveways in neighborhoods where we were reporting, too. They were all free for some time after the storm anyway.