In this letter to the editor, the author responds to our recent call-to-action asking readers to share how Hurricane Helene disrupted their station’s operations or infrastructure. Does your station have an important story to share about emergency preparation and disaster recover? Tell us about it so we can share with readers. Email radioworld@futurenet.com.
From a listener during Helene: “Thanks for staying on all night during the storm. We’re hunkered down in our hallway and you’re the only thing we can pick up.”
My wife and I live behind WAFT and were able to broadcast through the night from our home using PlayoutONE WebVT.
We lost Mediacom internet at some point, but our local ham radio club has a backup that is hooked into our router as a failover that uses Ubiquiti radios to get the internet from the city water tower about six miles away. It lasted through the storm. Sometime on Saturday we lost it because of fiber breaks.
Our generator was offline for a few hours on Saturday; we ran through 100 gallons of diesel and then it wouldn’t start until we replaced the starter solenoid. The scariest part was the large 60-foot pine tree that fell on the guy wire. Our tower is 600 feet high and 200 feet from the dwellings under it. It took until Saturday night to remove it.
We are far enough inland to have never seen a Cat 2. Our wind gusts were around 130 mph. Many more trees are on the “hit list”; even though I thought that enough were removed years ago that were near the guy wires. One thing that I failed to do was check the backups on the computers. One wasn’t even hooked up!
I think we’re almost back to normal and grateful for God’s protection.
— Bill Tidwell, CBT, president/GM at WAFT Radio
[Related: “Letter: UPS Failure Took Down Our AM During Hurricane Milton“]