Publisher's Point Of View
Robert Allan Hooftallen

For starters, what a pleasure sharing this place with two very important men in my life; both of whom happen to be good writers as well. I'm real proud of the company I keep these days.

Most of the production for this paper was completed when a pretty significant fire struck downtown Emporium. And that's why I write.

It's 2 am and the men and women who make up the Emporium Volunteer Fire Department and its supporting cast, like the fire police, their families and everyone else who operates just below the radar, are still standing outside my door in the biting cold doing the jobs that most of us, me included, either cannot or will not do.

For the past seven hours, they have been jousting with an enormous structure fire that all but devoured at least one building on Emporium's main street.

We've done our best to report what took place Thursday night, but the reality is we didn't have enough time to present the news the way it deserves to be presented. That's okay, we'll let the others take a stab at it over the next several days and then put our best foot forward next week.

Here's what I know.

Looks like the owner of one of the structures involved, Dave Stewart, will face a total loss when the sun rises in about five hours. Dave owns the NAPA business at 40 East Fourth Street, as well as the building.

The other building involved, owned by Todd Schwartz, is at 36 East Fourth Street- the Midtowne Sports Bar and Grill and the apartments above.

EVFD Chief Butch Housler was kind enough to give me two minutes of his time in the middle of wrapping up at a little after 2 a.m., providing me with this critical update. From what firefighters who went inside could gather, there was no fire damage to the upstairs of the Schwartz building. They believe only the rubber roofing caught fire.

Butch cautioned that under the circumstance, though, it was almost impossible to assess damage to the Schwartz building. He was holding out hope that firefighters had held the fire to just one building.

Being wrong wouldn't be completely unfamiliar territory for me, but from my view, it appeared as though Todd's building was blazing wildly. I will be amazed and shocked if that building's second floor is not destroyed. But the good money is on Butch.

Either way, here's hoping something good will come out of it for both business owners because it's hard to be optimistic about mom and poptype businesses that are trying to exist in Wally's world.

The scene was as you'd expect- an army of people stood as spectators around the police tape and reporter-types, shutterbugs and all the others who have suddenly become photographers in the digital age, tip-toed around providing today's email and internet fodder from the fire.

I have an excuse, I was actually working. And I couldn't help wondering if the firefighters were finding irony in the fact that so many ablebodied people- the ones who, like myself, just don't have time to be firefighters- found the time to be fire spectators.

You'd think there'd be a reporter or two I could recruit out of that crowd of news hounds!