“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated” – Mark Twain, author, poet and newspaper columnist
On the 7th March of 2010, a storm hit Shepparton that had all the force of a tropical cyclone. It was a vicious, merciless event. Gusts of up to one hundred and fifty kilometers an hour lifted century-old gum trees out of the ground and threw them aside. Major roads were littered with broken branches so large and in such numbers that it made them impassable. The wind was accompanied by torrential rain that overwhelmed the cities storm drains and inundated areas previously thought could never, ever be flooded. Power lines were down, roofs ripped off, and in one case the side of an entire building collapsed.
The power of this event, which lasted perhaps no more than half an hour took the community completely by surprise. For the next few hours, the Goulburn Valley felt like it was on its own. Power and telecommunications were cut, roads and rail were blocked and traffic signals failed. The railway boom gates in the main street were torn from their mountings and strewn across the crossing.
In circumstances such as these commercial and public news organisations perform an important function in keeping the community informed. Without doubt, accurate, timely newscasts reassure people, especially where disaster strikes. Regular bulletins on radio and television are designed to promote measured responses from the public. Newspapers, albeit published after an event, explain in detail providing overview and analysis, in a way that radio and television do not.
The Shepparton News is a morning daily newspaper that runs two shifts 6 days a week. Before the storm hit the town on that overcast Sunday afternoon there was almost no hint of the strength of the approaching front. As a matter of course somebody here generally monitors the Bureau of Metrology website, but as Monday's paper is generally full of sports news there was no expectation of this storm being anything out of the ordinary.
But its ferocity turned out to be anything but commonplace.
As the worst of the storm passed the paper’s most of the editorial staff reported for work, despite the fact that there was no power for the computers and no press. Many were not rostered on for that shift, but this weather event had been so shattering they could think of no other place to be. The newsroom, lit only by the emergency LED lights, was full of impatient, frustrated staff milling about asking when the power might be restored, when they might be able to work. The more well-resourced resorted to using their own computer equipment. Darren Linton, the paper’s senior reporter hunched himself over a laptop, found a working mobile phone and started calling everyone he could think of to try and understand how badly the town had been hit. Able to use only one hand to make notes he had in the other hand a torch to illuminate the laptop’s keyboard.
The Chief of Staff, Danielle Perkins frustrated by the failure of the phone and computer network started to plan a paper she couldn’t be sure would ever be printed. As the power outage lengthened past its first hour the discussion about whether to publish or not whirled around the office. When the publisher turned up there was a brief discussion. He confidently asserted that reconnection could not be far away. “The Shepparton News has never missed an issue.” he said.
An impromptu editorial meeting took place where it was decided that extra pages would have to be created to tell the full story of the afternoon’s storm. The pages would be marked as a ‘Special Edition’ and be wrapped around the main book, but at that point, neither the Editor nor the Chief of Staff had any idea about how many pages they would need or what stories would emerge to fill those pages.
The photography staff, who had fanned out across Shepparton started to return with astonishing images of the devastation. The Shepparton Cycling Club building had been very badly damaged, its roof was wrapped around a tree 40 metres away, remnants hanging from branches tens of metres above the ground. All of the club’s memorabilia, some of it dating back to the 1940s was thought to be lost. A house had been cut in two by a falling tree, cars had been crushed and a kindergarten badly damaged. One photographer travelling across the causeway that links Mooroopna to Shepparton came across a group of motorists that were clearing the roadway of debris. Drenched soaking wet by the rain, they were strangers to each other, thrown together by circumstances. Some were visibly distressed by what they had just experienced.
Ray Sizer, the ‘News’ chief photographer had been out on the road the minute the fury of the storm had abated. On his return, he had to sort through the hundreds of images that had been taken by his staff. For the next hour, he was hunched over his laptop filing the best of them. And then he went out again.
Bit by bit a picture started to emerge.
Rafferty's Road, not far from the ‘News’ building had experienced the very worst of the storm. The winds had created havoc with trees, power lines and fences all blown down. The sheer scale of the destruction was described by one resident as a ‘mini armageddon’. Across the road, at Shepparton Airport the weather station, designed to withstand extreme events was crippled by the storm, but the parked Cessna aircraft, covered with canvas and tied down by cables were spared any damage. At the Tourist Park, a massive gum tree collapsed along the verge of the highway narrowly missing a four-wheel drive with a family inside. They had pulled off the highway at the height of the storms fury. A witness who had seen the tree fall from the shelter of his own caravan was incredulous. “I can’t believe how lucky they were”.
As more and more information started to come into the newsroom there was an expectation that some deaths or serious injuries were inevitable, but so far, so good. Reports were emerging of trees falling into lounge rooms and huge hailstones being hurled through windows. At Wanganui, the primary school’s library had collapsed.
Finally, at around 8pm, the end of the third hour, power was restored to the newsroom and the staff went eagerly to work writing and subbing the stories which would eventually take up an extra 8 pages of the next day’s Shepparton News. Press staff were warned of the late deadline and some deliveries were rescheduled. The only other news organisations in the region, ABC Radio Goulburn Murray and WIN News gave the storm - once-in-a-hundred-year event - as described by the Bureau of Meteorology, only scant coverage. ABC Radio had almost no resources to dedicate locally and WIN News thought the event so inconsequential they failed to report it at all. Only some days later did they provide some coverage.
The next day the Shepparton News sold out. Requests were being received throughout the day for more copies and the building was combed top to bottom to find those copies normally retained for reference. As the days passed more stories emerged and for the rest of the week, the ‘News’ was filled with interviews from witnesses and victims of the storm. Many lucky escape stories emerged but all of it was underscored by what the editor, Richard Bryce called ‘an extraordinary result from an extraordinary event’. “No one died,” he wrote.
The Shepparton News could have chosen not to publish that day. Or they could have chosen to do what everyone else did and give the event only scant coverage, explaining that the storm was to blame. After all, there was no power for a large part of the rostered shift, and when it finally got restored, it was almost too close to deadline. And then there was the further expense of printing 8 extra pages and paying overtime to the editorial, press and delivery staff which was a considerable burden.
But this is not what newspapers do. The majority of the off duty editorial staff reported for work almost as soon as the worst of the storm passed because I believe they understood that this was an extraordinary moment. They gave the publisher and editor the capacity to fulfil the implied responsibility of a newspaper. An expectation that the community has always held. To report the news and inform its readers.
It’s a simple principle, a catchphrase repeated so often that it has become a cliché. But in this case, the Shepparton News was the only news organisation in a town serviced by 3 local radio stations, a television station and two newspapers to take its responsibility seriously.
So newspapers are not dead, and the community is not sick of them. But if there is any lesson to be drawn from this experience it’s this.
It is a serious responsibility to report the news. And some days are harder than others.
I am not a journalist, nor am I a photographer, but nonetheless, for me, after nearly 30 years in this industry, it was a very proud moment.
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