The spectacular chemical fire that shot fireballs 200 feet into the air over Apex started just before 11 on a Thursday night. When readers picked up The N&O's final edition Friday morning, there was the story on the front page with a six-column photo of the inferno. And a map locating the fire. And sidebars on the chemical company's environmental record, properties of chlorine gas and interviews with evacuated Apexians.

That quick and comprehensive report may be what you would expect from your local newspaper when disaster strikes, but it was hardly business as usual for the newspaper staff. The coverage required a behind-the-scenes mobilization that tested the resources, nimbleness and -- in this Internet age -- technological agility of the newspaper. The report in the Oct. 6 paper involved more than 20 people, some hauled out of bed or bar, scrambling to pull the package together for a 2:30 a.m. deadline (stretched from the normal 2 a.m. finish line).

The fire also was a test of the paper's recent efforts to be a 24-hour/seven-day news resource for the Triangle community. The News & Observer has staffed up for just such an event, creating a breaking-news team of reporters and assigning a senior editor to oversee the paper's online reporting. After the Oct. 6 print edition closed out, several reporters and editors stayed through the night to post new reports and updates on The N&O's Web site, www.newsobserver.com, and it was updated throughout the day as the fire raged out of control.

Views of the Web site were up 55 percent that Friday, and The N&O sold 4,000 extra copies (There was a big N.C. State football victory the previous night too).

Steve Merelman, who as page-one editor supervised the fire coverage, said he doubted that The N&O of the past -- or many papers nationally -- could have pulled off such an effort. "I was amazed that it came together as smoothly as it did, considering the number of people we had to scramble." The mobilization was so smooth, in fact, that the paper's top two editors didn't learn about the fire until they read it in their papers the next morning (that'll make an editor spit out her coffee).

The paper expanded its coverage to nearly four full pages on Oct. 7, including a page of pictures. Follow-up stories last week focused on the investigation of the fire and its causes.

Did readers appreciate the effort? I surveyed some who live in Apex and Cary, and the 16 who responded gave us good marks, although most said they went to television as their first information source. "I thought the coverage was complete and well done," said Tom Joyner of Apex, a retired radio station owner. "That kind of news is best covered by television, since it is a moment-by-moment event, but the in-depth coverage still belongs to the newspaper, and you did it well."

To be sure, there were some complaints about the coverage. Several readers were distressed by photographer Chris Seward's short story on how he got close enough to the fire to get that spectacular front-page Armageddon picture -- saying that he endangered himself and emergency personnel by doing so. I didn't have a problem with that; it's what photojournalists do, and the picture ended up being used by CNN, WRAL and newspapers across the country.

A couple of readers were put off by a story that favorably compared Apex Mayor Keith Weatherly to former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani after 9/11. Daniel Chapman of Durham couldn't help contrasting the Weatherly coverage to The N&O's critical scrutiny of Durham officials after a recent landfill fire there. "In one case (Apex), a major news story that garnered national attention, the paper jumped on every positive story and mitigated bad ones. In Durham's case, The N&O shouted out with a loudspeaker every inconsistency it could find."

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