Journalists are used to weird working hours and conditions, but few could top USA Today’s Donna Leinwand in that regard.
As disaster reporter for USA Today, she travels the country and the world covering hurricanes, tsunamis and, lately, earthquakes — in Haiti and Chile. That means she can be summoned at a moment’s notice to cover, say, Hurricane Katrina or the Southeast Asia tsunami that struckIndonesia in 2004. She’d been well trained by her years at the MiamiHerald covering hurricanes.
Tracing her career for D.C. Pro SPJ members and guests over lunch April 15 at the National Press Club, Leinwand recalled the first word she had of the Asian tsunami. She said it was thought to be a minor disturbance but experience taught her to prepare for the worst.
So when she got the call to get to Indonesia, she was ready — bags packed and with dozens of donuts to "bribe" lethargic officials along the way to get her to the center of the action. Turned out the donuts came in handy, as she knew they would. But the trip to get there took 37 hours. Where’d she sleep on arrival? Anywhere she and her photographer could find. Devastation was everywhere. But they managed, and she filed story after story of the human tragedies every disaster produces.
Haiti was different. Leinwand had never seen the degree of devastationand despair she found there — bodies in the streets, a bulldozer scooping them up for a mass grave hurriedly dug. "I saw two men who’d been shot (and killed) and was told by police they were shot becausethey were looters," she said. Elsewhere, she noted, looters are arrested and tried, but in Haiti, they’re shot. Especially poignant was her story of finding a man lying in "a pool of blood."
By contrast, her coverage of the more recent Chilean earthquake was a breeze. "Chile was prepared," she said, having learned from a previous quake and taken steps to ensure buildings were built to withstand severe assaults. Asked whether she’d had therapy for the traumareporters endure from human disasters, including war (she was in Iraq), she said she’d been offered it but didn’t need it. She said if she ever gets to where she can’t take it, she’ll ask to be taken off the beat — and recommended that to any reporter covering disasters.
