Hurricanes don’t like to be taunted, I’ve learned.

Monday morning, afternoon and early evening were so slow in newspaper land that I was bored out of my mind. All regularly planned events were canceled in preparation for Hurricane Gustav. But Gustav was making a slow entrance, and there wasn’t much news to cover.

So, we went to lunch. And it was there that we jinxed our entire community. “I don’t think we are going to get much,” one of my co-workers said.

We were 30 minutes from starting the presses early — to beat the storm — when the electricity started flickering. Within 15 minutes half our building lost power. Within another 15 minutes it was totally dark.

With our generator man on the way, our photographers canvassed the area for damage photos and a reporter made last minute calls.

But, we still — like many of you — didn’t know quite how bad things were.

In fact, we nearly printed a headline on the front page that said “So far, so good.”

It wasn’t until one of our staff members went to a downtown apartment seeking a working Internet connection that we realized that it wasn’t “so far, so good.”

It was much worse.

Natchez was black. Adams County was black.

The facade of a building downtown had collapsed. A roof blew off. A tree divided a house.

The damage was massive.

A phone call to Entergy Customer Service Manager Stephen Caruthers brought it all home — this was worse than Katrina for us.

We re-wrote the front page story, and took a new photo.

Then, we spent six hours trying to find somewhere with electricity and a printing press.

Parts of Brookhaven had power, but we weren’t sure how long it would stay on. To be safe, we needed to e-mail our newspaper pages to the Brookhaven Daily Leader and to the Vicksburg Post.

Easier said than done. With no power and no stable Internet connection, you can’t e-mail.

The hunt for an Internet connection began, and thanks to the help of some very nice men at two local emergency agencies, we were able to send our pages.

But they couldn’t be printed until 6 a.m. Tuesday morning. Vicksburg ended up being our savior, and our Circulation Manager Sam King took an early morning drive north.

It was close to noon before the newspapers made it to our office, and probably after 1 p.m. before they got to your doorstep.

We hate being late. It’s not our style. But in this case, we were just happy to have a newspaper to deliver.

Newspapers like Tuesday’s exemplify exactly why newspapers are important. For most of our local readers, the TV was out, the Internet was unavailable and it was hard to know exactly what Hurricane Gustav had blown in.

You needed news.

The electric companies in Adams County still aren’t hopeful about having the lights on anytime soon. The situation is a mess, and electric crews are working as quickly as they can.

We have no choice but to be patient, calm and play it smart with things like gas and water.

Gustav may very well be our Katrina.

The city that helped Katrina evacuees needs help of its own now. And no matter how long it takes to get things moving again, we know our community is a strong one, lights or not.

We can help ourselves like we’ve helped others. We can be as strong for Gustav as we were for Katrina.

Julie Finley is the managing editor of The Natchez Democrat. She can be reached at 601-445-3551.