Thanks for your patience and understanding

"It was really a hard down. It just went boom, down. I knew we probably had no chance."

That was 12:50 a.m. Friday, when all power was lost to the Seattle Times North Creek plant in Bothell. Frank Paiva, vice president for operations, sensed that his people might not be able to print any more newspapers. He was right. At that point, three of the plant's four presses had been struggling to print advance sections of the Friday Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Those runs should have been done several hours before, but power lurches and surges had created havoc for the presses. A fourth press, which isn't used for the advance runs, had started to print the mainsheet of the Friday Times, but only 13,000 copies were off when the power crashed.

Production crews waited for hours, hoping electricity would be restored. "In the middle of the operation there's nowhere you can go. There's nothing you can do," Paiva said.

Eventually, some 1,500 people involved with circulation — carriers, drivers and loaders — were standing by, as well. Alan Fisco, vice president of circulation, said, "Everybody was optimistic that we were going to publish."

As the hours passed, the optimism waned. Fisco kept delaying the decision to abandon hope, but at 6 a.m., he called Times President Carolyn Kelly. "At that point, I knew. It was an awful feeling, the realization that we weren't going to publish."

When he and Kelly agreed the cause was lost, Fisco passed the word to Mike Sheehan, who oversees home delivery. "I told him, 'I can't believe this is happening.' "

The 13,000 Times editions that had been printed were distributed to single-copy outlets, most of them in the core of Seattle and on the Eastside. At the North Creek plant, Paiva said, "People were just depressed. We were in shock that we weren't going to print a newspaper. It was the first time in my career [33 years] I failed to publish. We all felt so helpless. Because of the timing of the power outage, we had no options."

The last time The Times didn't publish was 1953, during a strike. The P-I reported yesterday that the last time it didn't print was in 1936, also during a strike. This time the cause was the worst windstorm in more than a decade. It caused four deaths and left more than 1 million customers, including the North Creek plant, without power.

In building the facility, which opened in 1992, The Times worked with Puget Sound Energy (Puget Sound Power & Light at the time) to install a specific substation to protect our ability to operate during severe weather. "There is a lot of redundancy built into the plant," Paiva said.

Two separate feeds from PSE serve the plant. In the past when one feed went down, the other provided power. Friday morning the storm caused the failure of both feeds.

Once the decision was made to scrap further Friday press runs, attention shifted to contingency plans for the weekend. "We started to concentrate on the next set of runs, and we became real stubborn about ending the losing streak at one," Paiva said.

Advance sections for the Saturday newspapers were printed at The News Tribune in Tacoma and at Rotary Offset Press, a Times subsidiary in Renton. We canceled the early edition of the Sunday newspaper, which is usually available on Saturdays. Arrangements were made to print the main news sections of the Saturday newspapers in Tacoma and at Rotary, which was having its own problems in the aftermath of the storm.

Meanwhile, in addition to covering the aftermath of the storm, the two newsrooms were scrambling with production complications. Without knowing where the newspapers would be printed, it wasn't even clear how many pages they would have.

At 11:07 Friday night, power was restored to the Bothell plant, and plans started changing again. Because of the difficulties at Rotary, P-I production was shifted back to North Creek. The News Tribune continued to run The Times and ended up printing a total of 122,000 newspapers, finishing at 3:21 a.m. The rest of The Times papers were printed in Bothell.

Restarting the presses in Bothell was complicated for both mechanical and technical reasons. These modern behemoths are a combination of heavy metal and computer wizardry, and Paiva praised the know-how of the press operators who brought them back to life quickly and safely.

"There are tricks of the trade to get a press started. Stuff old pros know how to do," he said. In the end, The Times run was done at 3:59 a.m. and the P-I at 4:23.

"I can't tell you how many times our best planning changed and at times got thrown away," Paiva said. "It was very tricky in regards to where transportation was going to get their papers. So we were balancing all night."

Fisco said transportation crews scrambled to be where the newspapers were coming off the presses. "That was a nice problem to have, though. At least we had newspapers."

Of some 1,400 carriers, only five weren't at work Friday night, Fisco said.

Paiva praised how well people came together. "One common trait is people always show up," he said. "I looked around to see who we were missing and everybody was here. It just amazing how people in the newspaper business — in every department — show up even when they have their own problems to deal with."

Several newspapers called on Friday, offering to help. The News Tribune actually moved its own news deadlines so they could start printing The Times as soon as possible. "They were just super," Paiva said.

He also saluted the bravery, skill and dedication of the workers for the power companies. "To me they're just like firemen and policemen. We've had great cooperation from Puget Sound Energy," he said.

I asked Fisco and Paiva what they would want to say to readers and advertisers.

"Thanks for your patience and understanding," Fisco said.

Paiva's one-word answer was a heartfelt "sorry."

Inside The Times appears in the Sunday Seattle Times. If you have a comment on news coverage, write to Michael R. Fancher, P.O. Box 70, Seattle, WA 98111, call 206-464-3310 or send e-mail to mfancher@seattletimes.com. More columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists