When two earthquakes struck last Sunday morning, newsrooms across Hawai'i raced to action. What they accomplished — or didn't — during that power-deprived day would depend on quick decisions, technology and, as one station manager would say, "pure, dumb luck."

For many newsrooms, success was a simple matter of "have generator, will report."

While other radio stations went silent as blackouts hit O'ahu and the Big Island, KSSK's AM and FM stations, powered by backup generators, took the lead, providing updates from Civil Defense and personal reports from callers.

KITV-4, which is equipped with a backup generator, provided the quickest and most comprehensive TV reporting last Sunday, and ran the most heavily used local news Web site.

The Honolulu Advertiser also provided comprehensive online coverage. Using generators and wireless connections, the newspaper posted nearly 120 stories and updates throughout Sunday.

KITV began its continuous live coverage within 45 minutes of the quake.

"We made an immediate decision to get on (the air) and stay on," said news director Tod Pritchard. "The emergency system kicked in immediately, so we had cameras and audio. Pamela (Young) got here within 20 minutes and I told her to get in the anchor chair and start talking."

Few O'ahu viewers were able to pick up the broadcasts, but Pritchard said the signal was shared nationally via the DISH network and CNN.

"We were the only TV station broadcasting, period," he said. "We were fortunate to be on CNN, which linked us to the entire world. As a result, lot of local residents got their news through family and friends who saw the broadcasts on the Mainland."

While local news sites that depend on local Internet service providers were unable to post breaking stories, KITV, which is connected through "service farms" in Minnesota and New Jersey, provided streaming video Webcasts, as well as photos and videos submitted by Big Island residents, throughout the day.

The site recorded approximately 2.5 million page views on Sunday, "about as much as we usually get in a month," Pritchard said.

"Every organization has its defining moment," Pritchard said. "This was ours."

Things weren't as rosy a mile away at KGMB-9. Staffers quickly reported for work, but without a generator, their hands, microphones and cameras were largely tied. The station broadcast its first news report at 7:25 p.m., from the company's parking lot.

"We had the people ready and able to do the job but they couldn't because we didn't have a generator," station manager Rick Blangiardi said. "As the day went on, it became incredibly frustrating.

John Fink, general manager of KHNL and KFVE, took a conservative approach. Although KHNL was capable of broadcasting, he reasoned that if cable TV, used by the vast majority of Hawai'i residents, wasn't available, and if residents didn't have electricity to power their TV sets anyway, it didn't make sense to offer continuous coverage.

Instead the stations offered periodic updates, enabling its staff to better separate rumor from verifiable news, he said.

KHON-2 general manager Joe MacNamara was on the Kona Coast when the earthquake hit. After being evacuated from his hotel, he got his first information about the quake when his mother called from New York.

"She held the phone up to her TV so I could hear the report on CNN," he said. "I put it on speaker phone and held it up for the hotel staff."

The station was able to continue broadcasting thanks to auxiliary power on O'ahu, Maui and the Big Island.

KHON was airing the Seattle Seahawks-St. Louis Rams football game when the quake hit. After a brief message from Civil Defense, the station resumed showing the game, with a crawl at the bottom of the screen with developing news.

Anchors Kirk Matthews and Linda Coble also were on the Big Island that morning. They were joined later in the day by reporter Marisa Yamane and two cameramen. MacNamara shot photos on his own and also hired a local photographer.

"Who could have predicted that three of us (MacNamara, Matthews and Coble) would all be on the island when the earthquake hit?" MacNamara said. "It was pure dumb luck."

'MOSTLY FRUSTRATING'

Hawai'i's radio stations had an especially rough Sunday. While KSSK distinguished itself with Michael W. Perry and Larry Price's continuous coverage, lack of power kept most of their competitors silent.

Hawaii Public Radio had working transmitters, but their electrically fed signal went down and didn't return until power was restored at 7:15 a.m. Monday.

"It was mostly frustrating," said HPR news director Kayla Rosenfeld.

She and her staff spent the day monitoring commercial radio stations for information. They also phoned in reports to National Public Radio.

Like KGMB's Blangiardi, Rosenfeld said she has been trying for years to get a backup generator.

Even those stations that were able to broadcast did so under difficult circumstances.

On the Big Island, Tom Troland, owner and operator of LAVA 105, KOA Country and KIPA, spent the first minutes after the quake scanning the radio and finding only a couple of low-power signals and nothing from O'ahu.

"That's what concerned me," he said. "We didn't know what the severity was. The fear was that (the quake) had generated a tsunami that hit O'ahu."

Eventually, Troland discovered that KIPA was still "alive" and he raced to the building to find the transmitter working, but with no audio.

Using bare wires he stripped with his teeth and duct tape, he connected the transmitter to remote equipment he brought.

The connection worked, and for the next three hours, armed with nothing more than a microphone, a mixer and a fistful of news reports from the Internet, Troland kept residents apprised of the evolving story.

West Hawaii Today was the media outlet closest to the epicenter of the quake. Yet, surprisingly, its staff may have experienced the least difficulty.

A few ceiling tiles fell and some computers were soiled with dust, but the electronic infrastructure of the newsroom was intact. Thus, when power was restored after just an hour, the staff operated under mostly normal conditions.

"For the amount of shaking we experienced, we came out pretty cool," said senior reporter Bobby Command. "For a smaller paper, it's probably easier to manage a situation like this. People came in and they knew what they had to do."

LAPTOPS AND NO LIGHT

Staffers at Honolulu's two largest daily newspapers spent Sunday trying to prepare the next day's paper without light, computers and, for The Advertiser, land-based phone service.

The Honolulu Star-Bulletin survived without a backup generator, using laptops — some powered by the employees' cars — to write stories, design pages and organize the paper.

Editor Frank Bridgewater said his senior editors were critical in navigating the challenges. "They've been here a long time and they've been through situations like this, the same sorts of challenges, before," he said.

The blackout knocked out the paper's locally based server, which made updates to its Web site impossible until power was restored after 7 p.m.

At The Advertiser, dozens of editors, reporters, designers and Internet staffers on O'ahu and the Neighbor Islands began gathering news within minutes of the quake. The first Web story was posted roughly an hour after the quake.

Online editors and reporters set up in a hallway near small gas-powered generators posted nearly 120 stories and updates throughout the day using Clearwire and Sprint connections. Honoluluadvertiser.com generated 930,000 page views on Sunday, more than double the previous day's total, and nearly 1.1 million page views on Monday.

"Getting emergency power going was key to our success," said Mark Platte, The Advertiser's editor. "We knew we would be filing updates all day and all night. In fact, we placed a reporter on an overnight shift into Monday to update all the areas where power was restored and she was relieved by early-morning staffers who took it from there."

Luckily, power was restored to Kapolei in time for The Advertiser's printing presses to print the Monday paper.

"Our staff did a magnificent job and it showed online and in print," Platte said. "We had the most comprehensive around-the-clock coverage in town."

Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@honoluluadvertiser.com.