Journalists worked around the clock to get the Angora Fire story out to the public

As the first responders and Meyers community are honored for their resiliency and efforts during the June 24, 2007 Angora Fire, another side of the story was behind the newspaper pages and camera lenses.

Ten years ago was a different time for news, and local online news sources such as South Tahoe Now did not exist, nor was there social media forum one could rely on for local news and updates.

Jeff Munson was the Interim Editor of the Tahoe Daily Tribune (TDT) during the Angora Fire. He is now the editor of CarsonNow.org, but back in 2007 he was at the paper's office thinking it would be any normal day at work.

"We had a plan for the day," Munson wrote in a book TDT published about the Angora Fire. "Photographs were assigned. Stories were being written. Headlines had yet to be scrutinized."

But all of that changed at 2:14 p.m.

From that moment when the first dispatches came over the scanner in his office, everything changed.

"It was bare bone staff at the time since it was Sunday," recalls Munson. "But not for long. This was all pre-social media, Facebook, Twitter so there was a time, within the first couple of hours where we were the only ones reporting minute by minute on the Tahoe Daily Tribune (TDT) website. It was surreal, with events rapidly changing in seconds."

"Reporter Susan Wood was giving me street by street accounts of what was happening," said Munson. "I remember how she said the entire side of the hill was filling up was black smoke and the scene around her, frantic. So I'm updating the TDT website as quickly as I can, also fielding phone calls from people alerting us about the fire and what we knew about it."

Munson was in the TDT office by himself, taking phone calls, listening to the scanner, updating the website, checking emails, writing about evacuations in progress. He was not alone for long though as Tribune employees who had already gone for the day started arriving quickly to help, from the publisher at the time, Gail Powell, on down the line.

"They answered phone calls, took notes, wrote them up and passed them to me, where I uploaded them as fast as I could to the website," said Munson. "Photographer Dan Thrift came in with several photos, and Jonah Kessel, who was across the lake on the west shore at the time, emailed photos from his vantage point before arriving at the Tribune building."

TDT Sports Editor Steve Yingling was one of those who lost his home during the Angora Fire.

"He got his family to a safe place and then came into work that day," said Munson. "I remember telling him, 'Steve, buddy, we have you covered. Don't worry about us.' But to know Steve as we did, he insisted on working alongside of us and did so through the duration of the fire."

Munson said they worked non-stop during the fire until it was contained.

"It was as if we were in another world for those two weeks," added Munson.