Cumulus tops them all in tornado coverage

[kturnerga]

Hello
I want to thank Diamondtwo and the rest of the Cumulus staff for their sterling coverage of the Mother's Day Tornado 2008. I woke up and tuned into 940 AM as generations before me did whenever a serious event occured. None of the Atlanta TV stations mentioned what happened in Macon until much later (as a side note). Clear Channel Macon's stations have no news department so it was not worth listening to the twenty songs they play at 102.5. I listened to two songs on Peach and heard nothing about the tornado so I turned back to Cumulus. 93.7 went dark so I listened to WDEN and WMAC on Monday and Tuesday.

Ron Fraiser and Shane McBryde came in that Sunday and, according to what I heard the following day, were met by CT the broadcast engineer. They stayed on the air until about 12PM and Jerry Marshall continued coverage during breaks in conventional programming.

I also want to mention that you should always have plenty of batteries, flashlights, and a portable radio or two in the house. Some water and shelf-stable foods don't hurt either. A new innovation is the LED crank-charged flashlight and radio. I had this and a crank-charged lantern. If you have solar-charged LED walkway lights you can bring them inside when it gets dark. That worked for the bathroom.

Take care
KT

 

[Diamondtwo]

KT-

Thanks for the comments about the tornado coverage. I concur with your kudos to Ron Fraiser, Shayne McBryde and CT (the TOTAL PACKAGE) for their fine work on WMAC. And props to our new market manager, John Rodriguez, who stepped in with on-the-spot reports as well; it's great to have a market boss who's actually been ON THE AIR before. Interesting to note that the high officials (Mayor Reichert, Commissioner Joe Allen, Sheriff Jerry Modena, EMA boss Johnny Wingers) all went directly to 940 to disseminate information, THEN to WMAZ-TV and the other media outlets.

Yep, my big 'ol 100kw blowtorch (WPEZ) lost power at the transmitter at 6am, and we were hamstrung by a finicky generator at our site on Ocmulgee East Boulevard. And since I-16 and OEB were both pretty much cut off from civilization for awhile, we were pretty much stuck until we could actually get out there and fix a messed up transfer switch. WDEN was lucky that their generator kicked in as it should have, so they were able to stay on through the whole thing.

Good news is, Z93.7 is up and running as of 1pm Monday afternoon, and that only leaves one station in the cluster that's not on - WAYS-AM (1500). Power's still out in the downtown industrial district, so... maybe tomorrow.

 

[kenglish]

I saw a photo on macon.com that was captioned as "the NOAA Weather Radio tower" destroyed. Did Weather Radio go off the air as the tornado moved across the east side of town?

I also heard there was a short outage of the siren system, due to a power outage at the EOC.

 

[radiojjh]

Hey David..it's JJ up here in Spokane...remember when the hurricane hit Columbus when we worked there? Luckily "Sunny 100" was about the only station able to be up and running thanks to our generator. I also remember at my house never being out of electricity...i felt so bad.....but it was all luck who kept power and who didn't. The one thing I don's miss about the South is the crazy weather. Granted--we do get more winter and snow than the South ever does. But there's no humidity here and that is sooooooooooooooo nice.

I remember you working very hard when the hurricane hit in Columbus, and I know you're the guy doing what you can possibly do there as well. Best wishes in recovering back to 100% my friend.

Can't believe in July i will start my 11th year here at KISC-FM...the Arbitron god smiled on us again #1 12+, and 25-54 for a 2nd book in a row.....

Take Care David!!


JJ...your Spokane radio pal.....

 

[Diamondtwo]

JJ-

Oh, yes, I do remember Hurricane Opal very well.

We created a makeshift studio out of a Radio Shack mixer, a mic, two Denon CD players, a backup phone system and a lamp we borrowed from Ken Woodfin's office. We had a 2500watt Coleman generator out back, a 100 ft. extension cord from the generator to the makeshift studio, and I ran about 100 feet of wire up into the attic of the building on Wynnton (to the closet where the STL and processing were house). We bought two 5 gallon cans of gas and had the generator ready to roll.

At about 11 o'clock that night, power finally went out. I grabbed a flashlight and a screwdriver, went upstairs, replaced the leads from the control room to the STL with the ones from the makeshift studio, went back down, cranked the generator, and we went on the air. We had better coverage than the only other station in town that was on the air, WRCG (and they were news/talk!) RCG's studio generator finally bit the dust, and we were the ONLY station on the air for most of the night giving information on closings and emergency services.

We were able to go about two hours at a time on the generator, then we'd have to go silent for a bit while we powered it down and re-fueled. One of those re-fueling episodes found me out on the back veranda of the Sunny building pouring gas into the generator, when a 60 mph gust of wind hit. So there I am with five gallons of gas in one hand, the other arm wrapped around one of the support pillars to the building, pleading with the Almighty not to send me flying out into Wynnton Road.

I had a polite but firm email exchange with Doug Kellett awhile back (who does fill-in talk show hosting for stations all over the country via ISDN) that he was NOT the only station on the air in Hurricane Opal... something he put in his "official" biography. In fact, WRCG (where Doug was News Director) was OFF the air more than they were ON during the height of the storm. "Oh, yeah, I do seem to recall that, now that you mention it," he said.

BTW that was also the night that WKCN (Kissin' 99.3) lost its original tower site out near Fort Mitchell. Tom Moog (voiceover guy out of NC), who was working at Kissin' at the time and lived out that way, told me that one minute you could see the tower, and the next... nothing.

Gee, JJ... thanks for the memories. THAT's the kind of stuff that makes radio my choice of careers. We may be accused of being milquetoast and boring at times, but when the feces hit the fan, we're ramped up and ready to do what we do best.

David Nolin
Cumulus/Macon, GA
(aka "TDO")

 

[radionut925]

Hello
I want to thank Diamondtwo and the rest of the Cumulus staff for their sterling coverage of the Mother's Day Tornado 2008. I woke up and tuned into 940 AM as generations before me did whenever a serious event occured. None of the Atlanta TV stations mentioned what happened in Macon until much later (as a side note). Clear Channel Macon's stations have no news department so it was not worth listening to the twenty songs they play at 102.5. I listened to two songs on Peach and heard nothing about the tornado so I turned back to Cumulus. 93.7 went dark so I listened to WDEN and WMAC on Monday and Tuesday.

Ron Fraiser and Shane McBryde came in that Sunday and, according to what I heard the following day, were met by CT the broadcast engineer. They stayed on the air until about 12PM and Jerry Marshall continued coverage during breaks in conventional programming.

I also want to mention that you should always have plenty of batteries, flashlights, and a portable radio or two in the house. Some water and shelf-stable foods don't hurt either. A new innovation is the LED crank-charged flashlight and radio. I had this and a crank-charged lantern. If you have solar-charged LED walkway lights you can bring them inside when it gets dark. That worked for the bathroom.

Take care
KT

Don't forget the weather radio, especially with a battery charger!

 

[daryll]

For the record...

I was monitoring Channel 2 Action News Sunday AM and they did indeed mention Macon/Middle Georgia very early Sunday morning and later that day. I was checking them out at 5:15. Meteorologists Glenn Burns and David Chandley both warned viewers in our area to be on the lookout for the same situation that occurred in Douglas, Fulton and Troup counties. Chandley referenced his daughter who attends GC&SU in Milledgeville but that she was on break this week. They also discussed the intense lightning associated with the storms. While our tornados didn't get all of their attention that morning, Channel 2 did have it.

 

[kturnerga]

My bad; I was going by what my sister told me.

 

[trevor2]

Re: For the record...

I was monitoring Channel 2 Action News Sunday AM and they did indeed mention Macon/Middle Georgia very early Sunday morning and later that day. I was checking them out at 5:15. Meteorologists Glenn Burns and David Chandley both warned viewers in our area to be on the lookout for the same situation that occurred in Douglas, Fulton and Troup counties. Chandley referenced his daughter who attends GC&SU in Milledgeville but that she was on break this week. They also discussed the intense lightning associated with the storms. While our tornados didn't get all of their attention that morning, Channel 2 did have it.

Hi Daryll,

The wife and I were with the in-laws in Fayetteville this weekend, and they were watching WSB Sunday AM (among others). We missed the references to Macon, but you said they mentioned it very early. We checked in around 9:15, and it seemed to be all Clayton County. We still had no idea. Coming down I-75 Sunday evening, we saw the "State of Emergency" alert on the interstate message boards. That was our first clue.

Speaking of Glenn Burns, we heard him Saturday night during the 11pm news warning viewers of the danger from these storms. He advised folks to spend the night in their basements, if possible. He also had the most bizarre advice I might have ever heard from a meteorologist. He suggested parents make their children wear their bicycle helmets all night, in case things got bad. Sounded kooky then, but in hindsight...