The story behind our Point Fire coverage

By Chris Fusco , Executive Editor

Press Democrat visual journalist Kent Porter was first on the scene – even though he was supposed to be off. As Kent began taking photos and video of what would become the 1,200-plus-acre Point Fire on Father’s Day afternoon, the rest of our PD team jumped into action.

These are times when our community turns to us, but this was my first go-around with wildfire season (I'm now 6 months on the job), and the questions began racing through my head. Would people lose their homes? Would citizens or fireighters be injured or lose their lives? Do we have enough boots on the ground? How will our coverage evolve? Would the fire gear we've issued to our staff be enough to keep them safe?

Senior Editor Marie McCain quickly posted reporter Colin Atagi’s initial versions of the breaking story, sending out a “push notification” to app readers, as well as an email news alert. Colin then rushed to the scene northwest of Healdsburg, joining Kent, fellow visual journalists Christopher Chung and Beth Schlanker (more on Beth later), and, eventually, reporter Andrew Graham . Senior Editor Brett Wilkison clocked in, as did breaking news intern Amy Moore and reporter Amie Windsor . Reporter Madison Smalstig stayed back, making phone calls and assembling information from our journalists in the field?into a liveblog?that eventually would draw 85,000 pageviews. Wine and food editor Sofia Englund began teaming with reporter Jennifer Graue to tell the story of?Dry Creek Valley winery owners?evacuating their patrons and employees.

We were about two hours in, and we were just getting started.

This is the breaking news playbook in a newsroom with a reader-first mentality, and I'm proud of our team for executing it to perfection on Sunday. With each story that goes online, we monitor who is reading it, how it is being read (e.g. mobile versus desktop) and how people are finding it (direct to our website, through social media or a search engine). This helps us determine what we do next – hence, the decision to produce a special Sunday edition of our Evening Report email newsletter – and how Chief Digital Officer Annika Toernqvist and her team decide to arrange?our PressDemocrat.com homepage.

By the time Managing Editor John D'Anna and I convened a Sunday night editors’ meeting some seven hours after the fire began, 19 members of our newsroom had come together to produce or update a dozen stories – including ones on air quality, weather conditions and evacuation routes – and post dozens more photos and videos, not to mention produce Monday’s newspaper. You can find all our coverage?in one place here.

In between processing visuals, Senior Editor Allison Gibson met up with some of our journalists to bring them food and drinks, so she did the editors' meeting from her car.???

And then the transition. Kent worked until well past 3 a.m. Monday, capturing images of the smoldering Lake Sonoma hillside as firefighting continued. Brett stayed up with him, handing the liveblog baton to Senior Editor Bryce Martin and reporters Marisa Endicott and Austin Murphy around 5 a.m. Monday.

Reporter Martin Espinoza ,?after working with Marie on our overview story Sunday night, was on Bradford Mountain Monday morning?answering readers’ questions on Facebook Live?and showing them the burn zone. Folks looking for a super-quick update turned to Sara Edwards on our PD TikTok account.???

This is exhausting but rewarding work, and we’re thrilled when we see tens of thousands of people read it – and, more importantly, use it – to stay safe. If you’re a PD subscriber, we thank you for making this possible. If you’re not,?please consider becoming a subscriber here.

Lest you have any doubt about the dedication of our hardworking team, consider this about aforementioned visual journalist Beth Schlanker, a veteran of at least a half-dozen wildfires.

Beth ended up tracking a Cal Fire crew to a house on Brown Road just south of Lake Sonoma, parking her Honda Civic and shooting about 45 minutes’ worth of photos and?video that resemble something out of the sixth circle of hell in Dante’s Inferno.?She embedded herself with the four firefighters as things got?worse?by the minute.

“The intensity of the wind was really surprising – how quickly it came up,” Beth recalled. “But the firefighters were so calm and professional. That’s what kept me kind of grounded. It was just like another day at the office for them.”

Beth’s images, including one of flames licking the house’s fence line as a firefighter took down a patio umbrella before it caught fire, are ones that drive home a danger we know all too well and remind us of the risk fire crews will continue to face.

Beth eventually conceded, “I was really scared at one point. What made me feel better was that the firefighters did not seem scared.”

Beth normally likes to stay with a fire crew during conditions like these, but, given everything she had in her camera, she made a break for it.

“I had been there for a while, and the photos weren’t going to change much unless the house caught on fire,” she said. “The wind died down a little bit and I decided to pull out … and go down and edit and send some photos.”

That’s what Beth does. That’s what we do. And it humbles me to be a part of it.

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To see more coverage from The Press Democrat, visit www.pressdemocrat.com