Dear loyal readers,

Hurricane Matthew has created a rare situation to our area that is creating a challenging weekend and the start of next workweek for our counties and the surrounding Coastal area. One of those challenges was the decision we, here at the Coastal Courier, made to take the Sunday edition to press early.

Once the mandatory evacuation was announced for those in the east end of the county, we were informed we would not be able to deliver the paper to that geographic area due the extreme nature of this storm. As each storm update came in, it became clear that we would run into issues with electricity, not just here, but at our press as well. Most importantly, we had to consider the safety of our staff and our drivers. We will be printing the Sunday issue of Courier this evening, 24 hours earlier than normal. Sunday’s paper will be smaller than usual so that we could get it done. And it will have information about recovering from a disaster.

Hopefully Hurricane Matthew will move through quickly and we plan to deliver to everywhere, except the east end of Liberty County, early Sunday, as normal. For those on the east end, we plan to deliver the Sunday edition with the Wednesday edition.

We will be constantly reporting storm conditions and breaking news online at www.coastalcourier.com and on our Facebook page for as long as we have power and internet.

It is our hope that Hurricane Matthew’s impact on our communities is minimal, and we urge everyone to be safe.

God Bless

Kathryn Fox

General Manager