The Ranger Online

Issue date: 5/18/06 Section: J School Travels

Media Credit: Mandy Derfler Editor Tim Kelly and associate managing editor Sheila Friedeck visit Dec. 30 with aspiring journalists in their storm-damaged newsroom.

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."

Continued...

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