The best teamwork comes in times of tragedy.

In the newspaper business, like most others, we strive all year long to build our team. We have meetings, lunches and team-building exercises. And we preach year round that our product won&8217;t be good unless we work together.

Yet, together doesn&8217;t really come until it has to.

For my college newspaper, our moment came with Sept. 11. A brand new staff was only a few months into still foreign jobs, but when tragedy came we clicked like old veterans.

Last year in Natchez, The Democrat&8217;s staff had their moment as we worked by generator-powered computers the night Katrina hit to put together a paper that would have to be printed elsewhere. Our power outage only lasted a day; visit newspapers on the coast and you&8217;ll hear teamwork stories that blow us out of the water.

People become as big as the tragedy, whether it be work, family or community related.

Our newspaper staff spent the latter part of the first-post Katrina day locked away indoors turning our collection of stories into a printable product. The first day was about the winds, the rains and a few trees that fell in the Miss-Lou. It wasn&8217;t all that different from a severe weather day any other time of the year.

It wasn&8217;t until we poked our heads out the next morning that the real stories poured in, and we realized the teamwork went far beyond us.

In the early days there wasn&8217;t national help from Red Cross branches far away. There was only the sleepless faces of John Goodrich, Angie Brown, Don Winters and scores of other local Red Cross volunteers.

The sheriff was called in to break the news to a packed house at the Steckler Multipurpose Center that they wouldn&8217;t be allowed on the highways any time soon.

It became obvious that the designated few trained by the Red Cross wouldn&8217;t be able to man eight local shelters on their own. They&8217;d need help.

Since most local schools were out, teachers and students were available to volunteer. Retirees joined the group, and some workers even took vacation days to man a shelter table. Churches-turned-shelters called on member lists to fill day and night shifts.

Our community was a team like never before.

Residents with land and fenced in yards volunteered to take in pets not allowed in shelters. Temporary homes for dogs, cats and horses popped up just in time. Special needs evacuees found the help they needed.

The community was quickly confronted with the fact that we weren&8217;t offering shelter for 2-3 days, but for weeks, maybe months. This wasn&8217;t a quick call to help, it was a longer mission.

And the Miss-Lou answered that call. We were a team when we had to be.

Soon, reinforcements from out of town came. Red Cross volunteers from the country offered much-needed rest for our local workers. But it still took community volunteers to make things flow.

From our point of view at the newspaper, the days and weeks following Katrina were this area&8217;s finest moments.

Now, a year later, we&8217;ve lost that team feeling. It tends to happen once things go back to normal.

Controversy over the revisions of an emergency plan have some of the prime players in tragedy response on opposing sides.

Communication lines between the United Way, the Red Cross and Emergency Management seem to have closed, and there is more of a &8220;play with us or play against us&8221; atmosphere.

Unfortunately it may take another tragedy to get the team back in working order.

Julie Finley

is the managing editor of The Natchez Democrat. She can be reached at 601-445-3551 or

julie.finley@natchezdemocrat.com

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