Big News in a Small Town

Not what I was expecting

4:26 am: I woke up two hours ago to a DM that downtown Chewelah was on fire. The hardware store went up in flames and, I think, took much of the whole block with it. Power is out and streets are blocked off. Our radio station across the street is ok but off the air. My friend and station manager, Chuck, has not been able to get it back on remotely.

I am supposed to be a newsperson — ‘journalist’ seems to me a little too fancy a term for someone who used to read the news on the radio — but I’m not sure what to do right now. I’ve never been a reporter, the person who goes to the scene and interviews the people who know what’s going on. I feel like I should do something but I’m not sure what.

I googled, of course, and got the photo above and some bits of information, but with the station off the air, I can’t do much with it. Nobody listens to KCHW to hear the latest news anyway, but a small-town radio station should be the main source of emergency information, the place where people go to find out what they need to know right now, this minute. The local paper can follow up later with all the details ( we are very lucky to even have a local paper these days, with so many of them going out of business.)

So, what do I do now? I can’t sleep, much as I wish I could. I should gather information about the fire so we can tell listeners when Chuck does get us back on the air. We don’t have a news department, and the only “news” we do offer is the daily community calendar, but we can certainly tell people what’s going on when they need the information.

This is a literal wake-up call for me. I came here with the idea of setting up a bare-bones news department so we could respond quickly when something happens and give listeners important emergency information. Now, something has happened and I am not ready. Instead, I’ve been learning how to program and run the station so Chuck can have time off now and then — definitely important, but this takes priority.

I’d better get to work.