Ken Stone, online editor for SignOn San Diego, has put in more than 16 hours of overtime and given up a couple vacation days to help the Web site cover the big fires. Here’s the e-mail he sent to friends & family:
Hi, all
The San Diego fires affected many friends, co-workers and neighbors — but not us, thank goodness. Still, we were glued to the TV and Web for two days, watching for any sign that our neighborhood in north La Mesa would be hit with an evacuation order.
The northeastern San Diego community of San Carlos was ordered evacuated Sunday, and that’s only three or four miles from us. This afternoon (Monday), those folks were allowed to return home, including several teacher friends of Chris.
But things weren’t so fortunate for people in my office at SignOnSanDiego.com. A receptionist lost her house to the fire. At least five staffers had to stay at friend’s homes after being evacuated. And our next-door neighbor’s grown son and his family lost their house in an area called Harbison Canyon. Now the family is staying with our neighbors.
The fires actually started last week, with one biggie on Camp Pendleton that threatened the home of our track friends Jim and Debbie Selby. But the real nightmare began Sunday morning. Since Chris, Bobby and I had spent all Saturday at the Mt. Carmel (HS) Tournament of Bands (where Bobby’s Grossmont High band took first in its division), we were sleeping in and unaware of the disaster. I got up at 9:30 a.m., and was vaguely aware of the orange tone of the sunlight entering the bedroom.
Then came a call from my boss at 10 a.m. He said: “Can you come into work?” I asked why. He said: “The county is on fire. Look outside.”
At 10:30 a.m., I was at work, having driven a car that had been dusted in fine ash. My job at SignOn that day was the produce the “digital daily” — an online replication of that day’s Union-Tribune newspaper. It was my day off, but I was happy to help. I did little work related to the fire, but I freed up other staffers to focus exclusively on disaster coverage. So I made a contribution to the news team and public welfare.
Here’s our site: http://www.signonsandiego.com/
Unlike radio and TV, where you have to listen for minutes or hours for specific information of interest to your family or situation, a Web site offers instant access to all important information. While reporters of the Union-Tribune were spinning wheels “out in the field” — preparing reports and photos for the next day’s paper — SignOnSanDiego was publishing information of immediate help. I’ve never been involved in journalism of such dramatic importance.
I did contribute a small scoop:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/sports/20031026-2105-arco.html
The newspaper’s sports reporters couldn’t get this information before me. But thanks to my use of the T-and-F Mailing List on the Net, I was able to get a call phone number of a coach.
A telling fact of how important the site was: Normally, the high-traffic hours for a Web site like ours is 10-11 a.m. On Sunday, the biggest traffic came between 10 and 11 at NIGHT. And today (Monday), the Web site was on the way to recording 5 million page views in a single day. That’s double the previous record of 9/11.
Many people looking at our site were evacuees looking to see if their homes still stood. We had tons of photo galleries. People were looking for shots of their neighborhoods.
Here are the galleries: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/fires/multimedia.html
After working 11 hours of OT Sunday, I came home exhausted. I not only sacrificed my weekend, but I also missed a surprise 75th birthday party for my dad in Newport Beach. He was visiting from Michigan, and my brothers Loren and Roger took him out to a fancy restaurant with their families. I had some surprises for my dad that I couldn’t share. But with many road and freeway closures in the county, and with Chris and Bobby counting on me to be around if a fire reached La Mesa, I thought it best to stick around. Anyway, another Stone family get-together is planned this coming Saturday. In addition, I’m driving up to my dad’s hotel in Costa Mesa tomorrow for a visit.
At 10:30 a.m. today, I got another call: “Can you come in?”
Sure. This time I helped prepare pages on the “live site” of SignOn, choosing art and stories for various section pages of the site — and again freeing up the more experienced SignOn newsies to do disaster coverage.
Chris and Bobby, meanwhile, stayed home. Their schools were closed. Bobby’s school may not reopen until Wednesday or Thursday. The air quality is so bad that employers and school officials are telling people to stay home.
Tonight, however, I drove to an urgent care clinic of Kaiser to be checked about my persistent cough and cold. It turns out that my bronchitis of a month ago had returned. I was given a different set of antibiotics. I was also given a mask to help me filter out that crap in the air. The soot, smoke and dust had done me no good.
Oh, and did I mention that I was supposed to be on vacation this week?
Well, the 16.5 hours of OT should add up.
Hitting the hay now after three very long days.
Hope all is well with you.
Take care.
Ken