Get Up & Go

Flood stories are nothing new in the Midwestern flatlands, and most seasoned editors are old hands at covering them. But last week, as the crest of the area's costliest flood (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS) swept down the Missouri to the Mississippi, the big job for many editors was not merely to report the flood; it was to find ways to print papers in flooded plants and get them distributed.

The Ottawa, Kans. Daily Herald (circ. 6,194) was just starting its afternoon press run when the flood waters from the Kaw River began lapping at its doors. In the basement, pressmen rigged a block & tackle to hoist the electric press motor above the water, finally gave up the race when the flood kept coming. Then the Herald staff waded waist-deep out of the shop to set up an airplane shuttle service between Ottawa and a printing plant in Chanute, 80 miles away. The Herald didn't miss an edition.

In Manhattan, the Mercury-Chronicle (circ. 5,445) staff trundled eight-page forms out of the building through four feet of water, set up temporary quarters a mile away at Kansas State College. There they joined with the Kansas State Collegian (circ. 8,376) and the rival Manhattan Tribune-News (circ. 3,365) in a joint flood edition. The lola Register (circ. 4435) went to press with a farm tractor harnessed to the presses for power.

Ink & Water. The biggest burden fell on the Kansas City Star and Times, which have the biggest circulation (Times: 353,-836; Star: 363,127) through the Kansas and Missouri rural areas. The Star-Times offices were high & dry in midcity, but Publisher Roy Roberts woke up one morning to find that his ink supply was under 14 feet of water in Kansas City's flooded industrial district. By bringing ink in trucks and tank cars from St. Louis and Philadelphia, he kept the presses rolling.

The Star-Times's 48-man staff worked around the clock on the big story. When the Star needed a detail map to show the destruction of the industrial district, Cub Reporter Bob Beason went into the water and waded and swam from building to building to assess damage. Reporter Bill Blair and Photographer Bob Youker persuaded a passing Army amphibious truck to ferry them about, were arrested for their enterprise; their soldier-chauffeur and truck were AWOL from Fort Leavenworth.

While Reporter Bernard Turnbull was out on a pre-dawn flood assignment, he missed a bit of news at home: his house was flooded to the eaves and his 21-year-old son was rescued by boat from the roof.

Planes & Boats. But the Star's biggest job, getting the bulky bundles of papers out to the customers once they were printed, fell to Circulation Manager Hugh Dasbach, 62, who has been delivering the paper since he was 14 years old. Days before the high water, he had foreseen trouble, had lined up trucks, airplanes, wagons and a small flotilla of boats to get the papers through, over and around the floods. Sample detour: the truck to Manhattan--120 miles away--traveled over a 470-mile detour through St. Joseph, Mo. and Marysville, Kans.

To carry papers into Chanute, a plane met Star-Times delivery trucks on one side of the impassable Neosho River and ferried papers to a landing strip on the other side. When the Osborn Clinic and Hospital at Colony, Kans. ran short of typhoid vaccine, it asked a Kansas City hospital to send a new supply via the Star-Times carrier. The supply arrived with the next morning's Times.

At week's end, a subscriber in Lawrence, Kans. wrote the Star what many readers felt: "Lawrence has been without train, bus, air and mail service because of the big flood, but it hasn't been without regular delivery of the Star and the Times. The mighty U.S. hasn't got the get-up-&-go of a newspaper in taking care of its responsibilities."

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