The newsrooms of Southern California, like the homes and highways, were in disarray Monday morning, despite contingency plans that have long anticipated “The Big One.”
The Los Angeles Times’ downtown office was without reliable power and telephone service until noon, and reporters worked by generator light, using laptop computers and cellular phones. An impromptu newsroom was established in the parking lot of the Times’ heavily damaged San Fernando Valley bureau, and photographs were sent by helicopter to an undamaged office in Orange County.
Television and radio stations provided immediate coverage, dispatching helicopters to collapsed highways and buildings. The first broadcast bulletins of the earthquake, interrupting network programming, hit the airwaves at 4:34 a.m. PST.
“We’ve been on the air live, continuously, since about 4:45 a.m.,” Bob Jordan, news director of KCBS-TV, said Monday afternoon. “Everybody’s here. All our microwave relay sets are lit up. Both of our choppers are in the air. The satellite truck is lit up. Everybody here is doing their thing.”
At KTLA-TV, a Tribune Co.-owned independent station, reporters were at work preparing for their 6 a.m. news show when the quake hit. KTLA film, carried on CNN, provided much of the country with views of the destruction throughout the day.
“We have a rule here (for employees), “If it’s big and bad, don’t ask, come in,’ ” said news director Warren Cereghino.
Another Los Angeles newspaper, the Daily News, was hit hard; its San Fernando Valley headquarters was destroyed, and its delivery fleet was halved. But reporters and editors reported to work at the loaned offices of the Santa Monica Outlook, and a 12-page edition was planned for Tuesday, said Editor Robert W. Burdick. The tabloid paper normally prints 100 to 120 pages.
Burdick, who is married to an executive of the Outlook, noted with appreciation the hospitality of the Copley newspaper chain, which owns the Santa Monica paper. His temporary office even came with a photograph of the couple’s 10-year-old son.
“We’re operating on a wing and a prayer,” Burdick said. “We’ve got a crew of 20 to 25 reporters here, and a lot more scattered around. Many of them suffered huge damages in their own homes. We told them, `Family crises come first; then, if you can, help us out with the paper.’
“I don’t know how we’ll get back to normal. “I’m worried about putting out tomorrow’s paper, and our computer people are worried about the next day.”
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A normal press run of 230,000 copies was planned for Tuesday on the borrowed Copley press in Torrance. But the mainframe computer and the editorial, circulation and advertising offices in Woodland Hills were presumed destroyed. No one had been able to get a phone line through to the News’ printing operation in northern Los Angeles County.
Los Angeles Times Deputy Managing Editor Terry Schwadron said the paper’s production network, with presses built at three locations in the 1980s, provided the ability to relay news and photographs across the damaged region.
“It could’ve been easier,” he said. “We were without phones and computers, and of course the roads were a complete mess.”
Virtually every reporter, photographer and editor on the newspaper’s Southern California staff went to work on earthquake stories.