Boredom Booms in Instant ‘Satellite City’ : Waco cult: Hundreds of federal agents and journalists pass gloomy days in a makeshift town, waiting for a break in the Branch Davidian siege.

WACO, Tex. — A city has sprung up along a rural road deep in the heart of Central Texas where no one worries about deed restrictions, building fees, zoning laws or property taxes.

With 400 federal officers nearby and half as many permanent residents, it is the safest community in America.

It is also the least costly, since the entire population lives on expense accounts.

It is called “Satellite City” and is home for television, radio and print journalists from around the world encamped at a roadblock two miles south of the fortified compound where religious cult members have been holed up for six weeks.

Despite the advantages, almost everyone in the makeshift city of news vans, tents and satellite dishes is usually as gloomy as the blustery winds and cold rains that often sweep through.

The city was founded the evening of Feb. 28. Earlier that day, heavily armed federal agents had tried to serve a search warrant at the compound of Branch Davidian leader David Koresh. A gun battle ensued that left four agents and an unknown number of cult members dead.

The community continues to exist in anticipation that federal authorities may someday soon resolve the stalemate with the barricaded cult members, who are believed to have enough supplies to last more than a year.

As long as Koresh and his followers refuse to emerge, reporters and federal authorities alike share the same disappointment, irritation, boredom and frustration over the impasse that seems certain to extend through Easter weekend.

“The notion is to expect the worst and expect to be here for eternity,” CNN photographer and Satellite City resident William Walker said.

“I was married a week before the siege began,” Walker said. “So I’m spending my honeymoon in beautiful, exotic, Waco, Tex., while my wife is in North Carolina--that’s a long commute.”

On Tuesday, bored denizens of the roadside enclave started their own newspaper, the Satellite City Daily News. Copies can be had at the Salvation Army truck, the preferred coffee dispenser. Motto of the new publication: If it happens, it’s news to us.

The top story was about a party planned for Saturday called “Dance in the Ditch and Barbecue.” Press Credentials will be mandatory. BYOB (Bring your own boots). Three-piece band “The Cameramen” will entertain.

“A sense of humor is vital here,” said Wayne Dolcefino, who operates a mobile investigative unit for KTRK-TV in Houston, one of 35 television stations in Satellite City. “Otherwise, you’ll go nuts living in a ditch alongside a farm road for 39 days.”

Joe Duncan, “Mayor of Satellite City” and free-lance cameraman for NBC in Houston, agreed.

“I campaigned on a Porta Potti platform,” Duncan said, standing beside a soggy tent he called City Hall. “In Satellite City, our meals are catered, but our sewer system is takeout.”

The lawmen and journalists are spending an estimated $2 million a week in Waco on meals, rental cars, associated services and rooms in hotels and motels that have been booked solid for six weeks.

“We’ve had a tremendous increase in our volume of business,” said David Irish, manager of the 123-room Ramada Inn. “It will be an adjustment for everyone when the agents and journalists leave town.”

In the meantime, the journalists have settled into a grinding routine that revolves around a daily 30-minute news conference at the Waco Hilton. The conference is the only official source of information about the siege.

Typically, federal authorities reiterate that the standoff will not last forever, then counter questions about their handling of the abortive raid with flat denials, “no comments” or responses that generate even more questions.

After the news conference, many reporters make an obligatory 10-mile drive to Satellite City for a peek at the compound on the off-chance that Koresh may decide to surrender and lead his 95 followers out of the compound about the same time.

“Doing my hourly reports is becoming an exercise in creative writing,” said radio reporter Donna Alday, who has worked an overnight shift in Satellite City for six weeks. “You grope for words to describe the same picture you’ve seen every night for more than a month.”

Through a telephoto lens, that picture is a full-frame shot of a static cluster of peach-colored buildings inside the cult’s 77-acre compound.

David Phillip, a contract photographer for the Associated Press, has kept a camera aimed at the compound every night for six weeks. “That building just doesn’t move,” he lamented.