Any good fire stories?

[taylorengineer]

The KICY thread below made me remember my little ol' MW-5 roast 17-18 years back.
I'll never forget that sinking feeling, seeing smoke bellowing out of every crack in the building, as I rounded the corner. The 3 phase power went through the meter box and one leg dropped due to rainwater corrosion. The MW did not have the phase protection board installed, and, well......the rest is history! When I arrived on site, the plate transformer was on fire as well as the rest of the transmitter. I could only crack the door open but I could tell it was bad!
Most everything in the building burned or melted except for the old standby 21E Collins transmitter.After drying the water out of it's PA's it came up in all it's glory! We were back the next day at full power!
The good part of the story was the purchase of the new DX-10 transmitter. It was one of the first built.....I still feel stupid because I argued for a Powerrock. I never regretted getting the DX-10.....well , except for that Jenning vac-pack cap that kept arcing the first year we had it. But that's another war story.....
Any good "roast" stories out there?

 

[Les]

Would have been around 1964-65. I had just moved from WYNG, Warwick, R.I.
to another station in the market and was fortunately not involved in this
fiasco:

The transmitter was in a metal-sheathed building set on top of a
disused brick wood-bending oven at an old WW-II aircraft factory
on Chepiwanoxet Point in East Greenwich Rhode Island. One morning
the transmitter wouldn't come up at all (it was a daytimer then).
The morning guy called the engineer who lived over 50-miles away
and had a full-time job elsewhere. When he finally got to the site
there was no site. The entire building atop the brick "oven" was
gone. The stairs up the side were still there, and when he got
above the parapet, he found the Gates 1-kW transmitter lying on its
side in a charred, tangled mess.

They were able to get the trash hauled, a new building thrown up, and
an RCA kilowatt delivered to the site within a week or two and there
were no problems until about a month later when deja vu set in:

One morning the transmitter wouldn't come up at all (it was still
a daytimer). The morning guy called the engineer who still lived
over 50-miles away and still had a full-time job elsewhere. When
he finally got to the site there was no site. The entire building
atop the brick "oven" was gone. The stairs up the side were still
there, and when he got above the parapet, he found the RCA 1-kW
transmitter lying on its side in a charred, tangled mess.

I lost track of it all at this time. I know they did finally get
back on the air with a new building, NOT on top of the "oven".
No idea whose transmitter they used. A few years later the
station was sold and shortly got a power boost, went fulltime
and moved to a new site with a directional antenna and new
call-letters, WARV.<P ID="signature">______________
God save us from those who would save us from ourselves! P-l-e-a-s-e!!!!!</P>

 

[wannabenewsboy]

I've got to do some digging, as I stated in the other thread, but there are some pictures at work of the fire that took down WYLO back in '89. The towers survived, but nearly everything in the building was lost. The only thing that survived was a Currier and Ives print of Jesus blessing the children, which hangs in the business office of our current location to this day.

We, too, have a Collins at the site, which still works. I've not had need to fire it up yet, but our engineer showed me how on a recent trek up there when the station didn't come back up after a power outage. That's another story entirely...<P ID="signature">______________
Dan Cooper
AM540 The Word/105.3 The Fish Milwaukee, WI
Notice: My views, opinions, and statements are my own, not those of Salem Communications, its employees, partners, affiliates, or sponsors.</P>

 

[mpx123]

One of my favorites was a station in PA, 5kW AM. The source of the fire was never known, however, when the building exhaust blowers sensed the extra heat, they started up, they were HUGE squirell cage fans. The air fanned the blaze, turning the building into a gigantic blow torch. Flames shot into the air 50-70 feet...all comng out of the blowers. Once the blowers gave up, the fire went out!

The picture of the old W. E. wall mounted phone gave an idea of the temps inside...there was the reciever, still in its cradle...but now it was five feet long, since it had melted an "ran" down the wall.

 

[wxctintern]

I have in my bookmarks a link to the page where there are pictures from last year's fire at Clear Channel Philly. I bookmarked the page after someone posted it on the Philly Board last year. <a href=http://www.wowwhataprize.com/super-super-secret/ready-aim-FIRE/philly-fire.html">http://www.wowwhataprize.com/super-super-secret/ready-aim-FIRE/philly-fire.html</a>

At the bottom of this tribute page to Long Island's WGLI AM 1290 are pictures of the station after the fire. The station was dark at the time off the fire. They never rebuilt the station and 1280 in NYC bought the license and turned it into the FCC in order to boost their signal. http://www.wackradio.com/wgli/index.htm

 

[MattB]

> I have in my bookmarks a link to the page where there are
> pictures from last year's fire at Clear Channel Philly. I
> bookmarked the page after someone posted it on the Philly
> Board last year.
http://www.wowwhata> prize.com/super-super-secret/ready-aim-FIRE/philly-fire.html
>
>
> At the bottom of this tribute page to Long Island's WGLI AM
> 1290 are pictures of the station after the fire. The station
> was dark at the time off the fire. They never rebuilt the
> station and 1280 in NYC bought the license and turned it
> into the FCC in order to boost their signal.
> http://www.wackradio.com/wgli/index.htm
>
I worked in the WGLI building 4 years ago, for the telecom company who bought the property. When the weather is warm, sometimes you can *still* smell the smoke. <P ID="signature">______________

</P>

 

[Les]

> ...when the building
> exhaust blowers sensed the extra heat, they started up, they
> were HUGE squirell cage fans. The air fanned the blaze,
> turning the building into a gigantic blow torch. Flames shot
> into the air 50-70 feet...all comng out of the blowers. Once
> the blowers gave up, the fire went out!

This is a very common problem in transmitter buildings. When
I built the KNOM transmitter building about 8 years ago I got,
from the east coast, two "firematic" switches and installed one
at ceiling level just in front of both exhaust fans. These
are fusible links, generally with a red circular cover and a
black, removable element. They're commonly used over oil burner
installations in New England. I have not been able to find them
elsewhere...had to order these from an electric supplir in
Pawtucket, R.I. They're made to break the circuit if the ambient
temperature hits 160 degrees. Some fans have built-in overtemp
shutdown circuits but I wouldn't count on any given off-the-shelf
fan having one!<P ID="signature">______________
God save us from those who would save us from ourselves! P-l-e-a-s-e!!!!!</P>

 

[gr8oldies]

I remember reading and seeing on TV about a fire at WLYV-1450, Ft. Wayne, which was at the time Ft. Wayne's top 40 station. Actually it was a firebombing which ocurred after racial unrest in the late 60s. Apparently they flew in a standby transmitter from a co-owned station in Grand Rapids, MI..not sure how long it took for them to get back on the air.<P ID="signature">______________
Greetings from Ohio-where the governor wants everyone to know he's sorry.</P>

 

[seemoresparks]

> I remember reading and seeing on TV about a fire at
> WLYV-1450, Ft. Wayne, which was at the time Ft. Wayne's top
> 40 station. Actually it was a firebombing which ocurred
> after racial unrest in the late 60s. Apparently they flew in
> a standby transmitter from a co-owned station in Grand
> Rapids, MI..not sure how long it took for them to get back
> on the air.
>


1993 I was at WAKR in Akron and the jock got onto the pa system and when I got to the control room the transmitter was down and the remote control was not responding. I got out to the transmitter and opened the door and saw the most incredible sight. There were sparks coming from the ceiling as the overhead conduits were melting. What happened was there was an open delta corner ground power system installed in the fourties and the ground opened up. All electrical outlets immediately went to 240VAC instead of 120VAC. Everything plugged into tripplite isobars survived but those not protected this way had toasted power supplies. I had Ohio Edison remove the power from the pole so that it was safe to enter the building and wired up a step down transformer to the emergency generator which worked but the solinoids in the transfer panel didn't. Once I got this wired up we went back on the air full power and with most of the gear in one hour's time from the time it went off. It took a month to fix all of the damage and the price was $10k.

 

[Mike_Alan]

I worked for a 50 Kw FM in the 80's after they had an incident. Somebody left the Bird SWR meter on bypass due to false tripping. Call came in to the contract engineer that the signal seemed to be fading. As he got closer to the tower he saw smoke in the distance. Arriving at the site there was a grass fire in the field around the tower. Looking up he saw flaming balls of plastic coming off the tower from near the top. The heliax started arcing just below the antenna 500 feet up and was burning itself slowly to the ground.