Fire update

The photo of the fire camp in Pomeroy that you saw on the front page today was, believe it or not, the best photo we had available from the scene. Reporter James Hagengruber was able to file a story after all, before settling down into a horse stall for the night with a $27 sleeping bag procured from Wal-Mart. Ah, the glamorous life of a journalist.

With our own crew in place, we should have an update online soon, and a much better photo in the paper tomorrow.

So why did we take so long to get down there? There was some discussion of sending a photographer down Monday morning, but that would have left us with only one photographer to cover Spokane for the day. There’s no easy way to assess whether it’s worth sending two staffers hours away to cover a single event.