Audacy is saluting the work of its stations KMOX(AM/FM) in covering last week’s huge tornado in St. Louis. The tornado took at least five lives in the city and damaged thousands of properties.
Part of its story is how the engineering department got the FM signal back on the air after the station was knocked off.
Chief Engineer Kyle Hammer has only been working at the cluster for a few months, after moving from Minnesota. May 16 was his 40th birthday, but instead of heading home a little early that afternoon to be with his family, he found himself monitoring the storm system along with his remote colleague Aaron Cox, watching radar and listening to the station’s own on-air coverage.
They first were alerted of a problem when their custom monitoring software showed that a transmitter in the western suburbs of the city had switched to generator because commercial power had been lost.
But 35 minutes after that, the neighborhood where the KMOX-FM tower stands was hit by the EF-3 tornado. The worst of it swept past about 250 yards from the tower, he said, and the station signal as well as its remote control connectivity went down.
KMOX is a Class C2 FM station with 50 kW ERP, broadcasting on 104.1 MHz with a Nautel transmitter into a multi-bay antenna on a tower owned by K2 Towers and located on DeBaliviere Avenue. Audacy shares the site with Hubbard Radio, Gateway Creative Broadcasting and other tenants. Until very recently KMOX was WHHL; today it simulcasts the news/talk format heard on KMOX(AM). The AM is served by a separate site in Pontoon Beach, Ill., across the Mississippi.
As soon as the twister was gone and the conditions were safe, Hammer drove his truck from Audacy’s studios to the FM site. The drive is only about three miles but his trip took an hour and a half due to heavy traffic and obstacles. Road signals were missing or badly twisted on their poles. Many trees and utility lines were down.
“Glass and debris were everywhere,” he said. “I saw a building with its roof off and water shooting out of it. There was this weird mix of dust and pollen. Windows were filthy or missing entirely. Cars were damaged and bricks were lying in the street. People were walking around in a daze.”
When he got to DeBaliviere Avenue, the Audacy generator was on, but a network adapter in a part of the building not serviced by Audacy had no power and thus no audio to turn off the main transmitter and switch to Audacy’s functional aux site. He had to run UPS/generator power from Audacy’s suite about 100 feet to the network adapter onto Audacy circuits instead. He and Aaron Cox had fired up the aux and Audacy was broadcasting on that tower, but it was competing with the main. “Until we could either turn off the main transmitter, or restore audio, we were in a pickle,” he said.
After signal was restored, KMOX-FM ran on generator power for almost five days, requiring three diesel fuel refills. Commercial power finally resumed Wednesday morning.
Audacy highlighted the station’s work. “In the wake of a catastrophic natural disaster, the station’s return to the airwaves provided a crucial service, ensuring listeners had access to the most up-to-date information during a time of immense need and uncertainty,” it wrote in an announcement.
Physical damage to the site itself seemed to be limited to some missing bricks. The tower looks ok, though it will be inspected to be certain.
Radio World asked Hammer if he could share any advice for engineering colleagues based on the experience.
“Get the largest generator tank you can, and keep it full,” he said.
“Have as many paths as you can to get to your equipment remotely, even if that means tertiary paths or more. Also get in touch with your State Emergency Communications Committee and ask about emergency access credentials for situations like this — anything you can do to facilitate keeping a radio station on the air in an emergency may literally save lives.”
Hammer noted that his boss Becky Domyan, the senior vice president and market manager for Audacy St. Louis and Wichita, is a vocal proponent of AM radio and has lobbied in Washington about radio’s importance as a lifeline in times of natural disaster.
Domyan described her own experience: “I actually was driving on Mason Road near Lindbergh when it hit, and I have driven through storms many times. For the first time in my life, in this situation, I was terrified. At that moment, I tuned into KMOX to get an idea of where the storm was, so I knew what I needed to do to be safe.”
The mayor of St. Louis has estimated that the tornado did $1 billion in damage. Hammer said the community near the tower is economically disadvantaged and that rebuilding there is likely to be a daunting challenge.
[Related: “St. Louis Emergency Official Removed After Tornado Kills Five Without Warning Siren”]
