'People were depending on us'

CEDAR RAPIDS - The day before, during and after the June 13, 2008, record-obliterating crest of the Cedar River “truly was our community's and our company's finest hour,” says Chuck Peters, president and CEO of The Gazette Co.

In an unpredictable and steadily worsening disaster, the city evacuated tens of thousands of flood victims without loss of life, while The Gazette and KCRG-TV9, crippled by the loss of power and threatened with forced evacuation by armed National Guard soldiers, provided a lifeline of information to a community in desperate need of it, Peters says.

Mary Sharp, then Metro-Iowa editor and now retired from The Gazette, says she experienced a shiver of foreboding as she drove to work on the morning of June 12.

When she topped the last rise, revealing downtown Cedar Rapids, “all I could see was gray floodwater and dark, marooned buildings,” she recalls.

Her doubts about the paper's ability to publish a June 13 edition intensified when she surveyed the dark, clammy newsroom.

“We had no electricity, no water, no phones, no radio, no TV, no faxes, no emails,” she says.

With two computers hooked to an emergency generator, editors in a dark backroom posted stories about the flood on TheGazette.com.

Sharp assigned the reporters she could reach via cellphone to get out on the street and immersed herself in a 15-hour day she described as trying to organize chaos.

“You know it's going to be the story of your lifetime, and you want it to be your best work, but you have handicaps to overcome,” she says.

With floodwaters lapping across Fifth Street toward company headquarters, facilities staffers armed with flash lights pumped 900 gallons of water per minute from the pitch-black basement. Facilities and information technology staff strung cable and operated portable generators to reboot the company. Human resources staff arranged for potable water and portable toilets, which would remain in place for weeks.

On the Second Avenue side of the building, operating under equally adverse conditions, KCRG-TV9 co-anchors Bruce Aune and Beth Malicki went on camera and stayed there, with only a few breaks, for the next four days.

“We had answers when others didn't, and people turned to us. The phones never stopped ringing,” Malicki recalls.

Aune says they could not have done it without the support of KCRG reporters, photographers and producers, and members of the community.

“With the information they were feeding us and live interviews with officials, we were keeping it fresh, providing what viewers needed,” he says.

Working under hot lights with no windows and no air conditioning, they found it hard to project the cool, crisp look associated with television anchors, Aune says. They eventually began broadcasting from the water's edge.

Their wilted hairdos, shiny foreheads and open collars, along with their obvious commitment to help Eastern Iowans through a crisis, endeared them to sweat-soaked, mudcaked viewers, says Malicki.

“Even to this day people come up and thank us for what we did in the flood,” Malicki says.

Gazette and KCRG photographers in hip boots and chest waders slogged through the floodwater, documenting the disaster.

Liz Martin, while caught in the (mostly) stop and (occasionally) go traffic on the Interstate 380 bridge, the only bridge open in Cedar Rapids, paused to capture the iconic “Epic surge” photo of May's Island seemingly sinking into the raging river. That photo covered the front and back pages of the June 13 Gazette.

“People know what that scene is supposed to look like, and the contrast encapsulated the flood's extreme nature,” she says.

Veteran reporter Rick Smith, who chronicled much of the city's post-flood recovery, also wrote the lead article in the June 13 edition.

Working on a laptop computer with 30 minutes before deadline, Smith was just about to file when the computer battery crashed, scattering his day's work into the hidden recesses of cyberspace.

“That's what I remember most about that day - trying to re-create that article in 20 minutes,” he says.

Smith and Martin say repeated exposure to victims' raw emotions heightened the need for balance among fairness, accuracy and sensitivity.

All The Gazette's June 12 efforts would have been in vain had Peters not successfully resisted the National Guard's order to evacuate immediately or be arrested.

“They were carrying guns. They were not friendly people. They had been given a mission,” Peters says.

Peters, who had previously worked out a deal to stay in the building with Mayor Pro Tem Brian Fagan, called him again at the flood command center at Kirkwood Community College.

Fagan said something to the effect that it's going to get bad and we've got to get out, Peters recalls.

“I told him we would take the risk, and he said OK, but you're on your own, don't call for help,” Peters says.

Though the local river gauge had malfunctioned and no one really knew how high the river might get, Peters says it was not a hard decision.

“By then we knew how much people were depending on us,” he says.

Peters' assessment was soon validated when then reporter Justin Foss burst onto the air around 10 p.m. June 12 to plead for volunteers to sandbag the city's last functioning water well. Hundreds of people soon converged on the well, saving it and saving the community from the water dearth that would have ensued.