Reporter's notebook: Trapped in chaos

PORTALES — A fire was devouring a Portales city block on March 10, 1978. The Tower Theater, The Print Shop and several other businesses were aflame.

Panicked thoughts likely streamed through the minds of everyone present, but Brenda Fenton didn’t have time to think.

Fenton was a dispatcher working in Portales’ City Hall, but as the fire worsened, her team was evacuated to the Mountain Bell Phone Company office near the Portales Public Library.

The dispatchers were “stuck in a room that was total chaos, but it worked,” Fenton said.

“I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a dispatch center when something big like that’s going on, but you really don’t have time to think. Your phones are just ringing off the hook, and you’re trying to get different fire departments and stuff in, so it was just constant work,” she said.

Chaos or not, we may have Fenton to thank, in part, that downtown Portales still exists.

Today marks the 40th anniversary of the big blaze. The News will have more stories about the fire in Sunday's edition.

— Compiled by Staff Writer Eamon Scarbrough