By SARAH CULTON

sarah.culton@leaderpub.com

When Tropical Storm Harvey rolled into Port Arthur, few institutions were spared. This is true even for the outlets that reported on the storm and the ensuing damage.

The Port Arthur News sustained heavy damaged during flooding throughout Port Arthur, forcing staff to evacuate their building on Memorial Boulevard.

Though production has temporarily moved to Orange and though it will be weeks before operations can move back into the Port Arthur office, staff members say that the paper is working towards rebuilding and normalcy.

“It’s sad to see something so vital to the community, even though it’s just a building, destroyed,” said reporter Mary Meaux, one of the publication’s longtime employees. Meaux has worked at the Port Arthur News for 17 years. “But it’s nothing we won’t come back from. We’ve pulled together to continue to produce a paper.”

The parking lot of the Port Arthur News office now houses a pile of debris, including waterlogged desks and filing cabinets. The inside of the building is  stripped, gutted walls and ruined electronics strewn about the rooms.

“The office took about three feet of water, meaning that we really had to tear everything out, up to about four feet up,” said publisher Rich Macke. “All of the furniture that was left in there was basically destroyed.”

With  employees of the publication also affected by Harvey , delivery was one of the biggest hurdles the paper faced. In the first week after the flooding, Macke said he had several Port Arthur residents approach him asking why they had not received their papers.

“With so many people and carriers displaced, [delivery] was something we struggled with,” Macke said. “We have that all under control now and everything is running the way it should, but we have made sure the office has papers for people in the vicinity to come get.”

Macke hopes that remodeling of the news office will be completed in November, and that then the production can move back to Port Arthur.

“The separation [of being out of the office] has been hard on people,” he said. “Of course, everyone wants everything to get back to normal as soon as possible, but everyone is doing a really great job.”

Throughout the chaos that Harvey has caused for the newspaper, Macke said that his staff did not waver, and stayed true to their goal of getting news and information to the people of Port Arthur.

To that end Macke said the Port Arthur News was given away for free in the weeks after the flooding, just to make sure that the public was informed of the situation.

“We want to make sure that we are the source [people] come to when something like this happens,” Macke said. “We want to have everything they need when something happens. […] People need to know things like how businesses were affected and what businesses are open. We want to give the people the information they need to get them back on their feet.”

Both Macke and Meaux said they believe that the paper will continue to grow and prosper after Harvey.

“We’ve learned a lot from [Harvey],” Meaux said. “We’ve used social media a lot more. I see us continuing to do what we’ve been doing and doing it better than before.”

This year has shown some of the paper’s highest revenue in last decade, Macke said. This is something he expects to see continue once things return to business as usual for the publication.

“We plan to be bigger and better than ever,” Macke said. “Our goal is to keep readership increased.”