There’s nothing quite like being woken from a light doze at 7 a.m. by a text from a co-worker that there’s a fire.
That’s how my Monday morning started this week, as colleague Sarah Simpson (who has children and therefore keeps much earlier hours, and also has a scanner at her house) let me know that the fire siren at the Crofton hall I’d heard minutes before actually heralded a full-on structure fire this time around.
So I hauled myself out of bed, much to the displeasure and grumbling of my cat who was comfy and warm curled up with me, and stuck my head out the front door to see if I could see smoke. I didn’t at first, as in my befuddled early morning state I was looking in the wrong direction, as it turned out. Another text from Sarah pinpointed the location and the view from my back deck yielded smoke billowing into the air.
A mad dash to the closet for some clothes, a dash to the bathroom for something to tie back my hair (unbrushed, and besides, nothing is worse than wearing the fire all day due to smoke in your hair), and I was out the door, camera around my neck. I literally ran down the road towards the Twin Gables Motel, since sometimes if you’re not quick enough, the firefighters are so efficient there’s not much to see. That was not the case this time, which became apparent as I approached the site of the fire.
A quick click as a rounded the corner (I’ve learned from experience to always take a shot as you approach, since sometimes that turns out to be the only one you’ll get), and then as I got closer I could see smoke, flames and firefighters everywhere.
I immediately set in to get some photos of the firefighters at work, and some video to cut together later, along with a shot on my phone that I could upload quickly to other platforms.
When I could start to feel the smoke in my lungs I called it quits and headed home to write a short story with what I knew to post online ASAP. I must have just missed my colleague Don Bodger from the Chemainus Courier who arrived a little later and did some interviews to flesh out the bare bones.
Such is the process of covering breaking community news.
Fortunately, though people did lose their homes, nobody lost their lives or was seriously injured in this fire. In my almost 20 years of working in community news, I’ve had the job of reporting on others where that wasn’t the case, which adds a whole other dimension to this kind of news coverage.
So that was my Monday morning. How was yours?