One of the first major stories I ever covered as a managing editor happened in 2005. It was a murder, and the residents of the small town it happened in took it hard. The staff at the paper joined efforts to cover it and did a solid job of reporting and finding as many angles as possible for our readers.

From 2004 to 2008, I also covered massive wildland fires and tragic hiking incidents, not to mention some big stories that had happy endings, too, including one dramatic rescue of four friends who became stuck in a snowstorm near Yosemite.

Stories like these don’t happen very often. They are the ones that may occur once a year or even once every five years. When they do, the key is to cover them like every other story, with the same reporting and writing skills you would use on an everyday basis and then try to write as many interesting and important stories about the incident as possible.

The difference is simply that these stories are on a grander scale and may make regional, state or even national news.

In southern Minnesota, there have been a few lately.

Albert Lea hosted the Extreme Home Makeover Edition television program and is now going through the court hearings in the alleged elder abuse case at the Good Samaritan facility. Austin and its surrounding areas had substantial flooding this past summer, and just last week, a portion of Austin’s Main Street went up in flames.

The Main Street fire was particularly interesting from a journalistic stand point because the subzero temperatures presented a challenge.

The fire started at just before 4 p.m. and burned on into the night. The Herald’s Katie Johnson and Eric Johnson were on a previous assignment, saw the smoke and headed to the scene immediately. I followed shortly after.

The three of us continued our efforts for several hours, and the staff as a whole has done a good job with covering the follow-up stories this past week.

I could only imagine what the fire department was going through as temperatures dipped down into the negative teens.

As a reporter, it was difficult to interview someone outside for any length of time, making the businesses that were open a welcomed shelter. Some of the interviews could be conducted at those places as well, but then it was back into the cold to walk back and forth from the Herald office to the scene.

As challenging as the cold was, we simply found ways to cope.

Experiencing something like this gives you an appreciation for the crews fighting the blaze, and it also helps when the publisher and the advertising director join forces to bring in pizza for the staff working late.

I don’t write too often about the members of the Herald’s newsroom staff in this space, and maybe I should. But they did outstanding work in some difficult conditions, and they should be proud of a job well done.

Eric Johnson took magazine-quality photos. Katie Johnson turned in some solid copy on a tight deadline, while Lee Bonorden has written some nice follow-up stories and then compiled a list of those involved with fighting the incident for a special supplement in last Friday’s paper.

This week, complete with sports editor Rocky Hulne and news clerk Dan Massman, we’re ready to serve our communities again, and hopefully when the next “once-a-year” story happens, it will be warmer.