Ryan Olson/Daily Mining Gazette
Smoke from the burning Gundlach Champion building casts a shadow over the Houghton waterfront on April 24. The smoke, visible from miles away, drew many onlookers to the Portage Lake Shipping Canal to see firefighters battle the fire.

Ryan Olson/Daily Mining Gazette

Firefighters atop the City of Houghton Volunteer Fire Department's ladder truck spray a jet of water into the flames that engulfed the Gundlach Champion building on the Houghton waterfront April 24. Four departments worked for nine hours to extinguish the blaze, which gutted the 100-year-old building.

On the morning of April 24, I was heading in to WMTU to do my morning radio show. As I moved across the bridge, I realized that I wasn't going to get to my show on time.

What looked like an early dawn cloud from a distance was actually the Herman Gundlach building ablaze. I called the radio station to let them know I was going to be late because of work. I hit the Gazette (which was a block from the fire) and grab a notepad and camera.

As I'm about to leave work for the fire, my co-worker Garrett Nesse pops up. We decided to divide the labor -- Garrett would write the story and I would shoot photos until a staff photographer could be contacted.

Given that I only had to shoot photos, I had time to work on shooting and getting the best photos. For the first time, I used up an entire card of memory for a story (about 64 photos). I really worked to capture the scene up close. I moved across the bridge to the Quincy smelter site because I wanted to capture the fire from a different angle.

I wasn't certain that these photos would be used because typically the newspaper is focused on the action. Ultimately the long shot of the fire casting a smoky cloud over the area was the shot that was used out of the hundreds of photos that were submitted.

Click on each photo to see a larger version.

The front page

Click on the image to see the front page from the April 26, 2004 edition of The Daily Mining Gazette.

Comments? ryan -at- rtomedia.com.