The aftermath:
More work here tomorrow.
Update: Took longer than anticipated, but the station is back on the air with generator power as of 8:15 am, Thursday (11/1). Commercial power restoration is not expected until Monday or Tuesday at the earliest.
Update: Commercial power restored on Thursday, 11/8 for a total outage of 10 days. One good thing about incidents like this, I now have a fresh set of contacts for all the important people connected to servicing this site.
Class Charlie fire in the transmitter room electrical panel. Away fire party from repair locker forward. Set condition ZEBRA throughout the ship, this is not a drill.
Or something like that. If you were driving around Albany, NY this afternoon and noticed WDCD-FM was off the air, this is the reason why.
A little after noon time, the 480-volt main distribution panel at WDCD AM/FM caught fire, taking the FM station off the air.
According to this clock, it happened at 12:19 pm, when there was a loud bang and the lights in the studio flickered several times, followed by the building fire alarm going off. Thankfully, a quick response by the station staff and the Town of Colonie fire department limited the damage to the interior of the distribution panel. Other than the dry chemical fire extinguisher residue all over the place, the building is none the worse for wear.
The 480 Volt three-phase electrical distribution panel was installed in 1947 when the original building was constructed. The power company cut the power to the building and an electrician was able to re-route the distribution for the dry step-down transformers that power the studios and equipment racks. The original 480 volt service was installed due to the 50 KW AM transmitter for WPTR (WDCD-AM). Currently, WDCD-AM is silent, pending programming decisions by the owner, Crawford Broadcasting.
So, we spent the late afternoon vacuuming the NextGen computers and UPS out, wiping down the equipment, and making sure to clean out the power supplies and other nooks and crannies. Then, we powered everything back up, one at a time, and to our pleasant surprise, all came back up without error. The total off-air time for the FM station was about 6 hours.
I found this article in Boston.com an interesting read:
Vermont’s unsung Hurricane Hero
Just as the flood waters were rising and people in Vermont were struggling to escape their homes with merely the clothing on their backs:
…when I checked the CBS Evening News moments later, I watched in astonishment as the head of the National Hurricane Center, with a sweep of his hand toward Vermont, declared that the danger had passed. The storm was over, and overblown. The national media, focused on New York City, missed where Irene hit hardest. Vermont simply didn’t exist.
This is why radio, locally owned, locally run radio is vitally important. In the midst of the disaster, WDEV opened its phone lines to the listeners and received information about flooded roads, people needing to be rescued, evacuation centers, and a whole host of other things that kept the people informed and the potential death toll low. All of this while the power was out, the cable system disabled, the internet unavailable and battery-powered radios were people’s only information source.
I have driven by the WDEV AM site in Waterbury, VT several times. It sits back on a hillside off of US Route 2/I-89 with three, what look like Miliken self-supporting towers. It signed on in 1931 and has been owned by the Squier family since 1935. An FM signal was added in 1989. Stations like this are one of the reasons I still work in this business.
I read through the FCC’s Hurricane Irene information on which stations were off the air and when, I believe there are a few more to add to the list. Starting from South to North:
Most of these stations are now back on the air, however, several suffered much water damage due to flooding and will be off for a while. Lots and lots of roadways washed out, trees down, and power still out for tens of thousands of people, it’s a mess.
These stations that went off the area are but a small fraction of the radio stations that serve the Hudson Valley and upstate NY. Most of the large class B stations, and regional AM stations, which are also the LP-1 EAS stations, stayed on the air for the duration of the storm, as did all of the NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards stations in the area.
Kudos to the DJs, meteorologists, news people, and field reporters for keeping us informed and safe.
