All the news, hot off the garage floor

SURROUNDED by gardening tools in a dimly lit suburban Christchurch garage, the staff of The Star don't have time to stop and think.

SURROUNDED by old bikes, tennis racquets and gardening tools in a dimly lit suburban Christchurch garage, the staff of The Star don't have time to stop and think about their current work environment. "As strange as it sounds, it's business as usual," says editor Barry Clarke.

About 30 staff from The Star have been based in the garage of the newspaper's IT manager, Peter Gruebel -- his living room floor and dining table have also been commandeered by the journos and editors -- since the day after last Tuesday's devastating earthquake.

The paper's usual digs in Tuam Street were badly damaged by the 6.3-magnitude quake, as was so much of Christchurch's business hub. Staff had less than a minute to flee as large cracks ripped along the office floor, windows smashed and part of the roof collapsed.

About 20 minutes afterwards, and with all staff accounted for, management held a meeting in a nearby carpark to discuss what to do. "We decided we had no option but to abandon that day's paper," Clarke said.

The following morning, the army allowed a handful of staff to return to the office for 10 minutes to collect PCs and laptops, and to fill a few boxes with whatever they could grab.

Just hours later, the newspaper was again up and running out of Mr Gruebel's Burnside garage, in the city's western suburbs, and a special Wednesday afternoon edition was produced.

In another example of stoicism, Fairfax-owned newspaper The Press came out on Wednesday morning despite its city office partially collapsing in the quake, killing one person

The Press editor Andrew Holden was reported as saying that despite the terrifying ordeal, in the hours after the quake The Press reporters and photographers were quick to hit the streets and begin filing stories.

The Star, a 140-year-old community newspaper owned by APN with an estimated circulation in the Canterbury region of more than 100,000, normally publishes twice a week.

But the skeleton staff have been working almost around the clock for the past five days to produce daily "emergency editions". Some copy has been sourced and shared with APN stablemate and big brother The New Zealand Herald, but for the most part the 32-page editions of The Star have been produced by the garage-based crew.

The usual letterbox distribution has been abandoned for obvious reasons and the paper has been available free of charge at service stations, supermarkets and the numerous evacuation centres in Christchurch.

APN general manager Steve McCaughan said the extraordinary circumstances had served to highlight the importance of community newspapers.

"For days, most people in this city didn't have power -- no TV, no radio, no internet. The only news and images they were seeing were in the local newspapers," he said. "It also goes to show once again that media companies can have all the new technology in the world, but without great staff, none of it can happen."

The Star is also continuing to publish its seven smaller community weekly titles that serve the region of Canterbury.

"We're all running on adrenalin at the moment, and we don't know how long we'll be without a proper office," Clarke said.

"But we have to keep going. This is Christchurch's story."