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The 1998 Ice Storm

KML0224

KML0224

WCSH-TV (NBC) channel 6 of Portland, ME made mention of the huge ice storm which occured 10 years ago this past week, affecting millions of people in their state, New Hampshire, Vermont, upstate New York and Quebec. This also reminded me of the recent tower collapse in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, PA area of WNEP-TV (ABC) channel 16. Since I live in central Connecticut, I only saw the scattered news footage of all the problems up north, along with the reminder that we could've been next with this mess. Were there any broadcasters north of Portland/Poland Spring, Albany or White River Junction, VT who were able to stay on at all?
 
M.J. said:
Did the Camp-Fortune tower, which has most of Ottawa's TV signals, lose power at all?
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It's pretty well backed up with generators. I never saw any reports of those signals being knocked off the air at the time.
 
KML-224 said:
Were there any broadcasters north of Portland/Poland Spring, Albany or White River Junction, VT who were able to stay on at all?
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Yes. WWNY/7 in Watertown was on throughout, though only people in Adams/Lowville and south had NiMo power to watch them. Their transmitter and Master control had generators, obviously.Even then, Lowville was spotty, IIRC, and if you weren't knocked by ice, you were probably being flooded -- 3.75 inches of rain fell in a couple days -- for most, that was 3.75 inches of freezing rain. Combine that with the drastic snow melt from the western Adirondacks draining into the Black River, and you had BIG flooding. Then, that Saturday temperatures dropped into the single digits and the area got hit with lake effect snow.
Ch. 50/WWTI Watertown went off the air that Thursday morning (Jan. 8) at about 7:20, with a tower based in northern Lewis County (Copenhagen),and did not get back on until late Saturday afternoon. A fuel truck had trouble getting to their transmitter site generator, and Smith broadcasting brought in a huge 3-phase tractor-trailer-sized generator to power their studios by Saturday morning. Previous to that, they kept shooting field footage, and charged their camera batteries off the generator in their live truck.
Ch. 7 did not have enough generator power to power their studio lights & cameras the first few days; just a lowell and a camera in their master control.
Can not speak for WPTZ/Plattsburgh. Ch. 11 CKWS in Kingston, ONT lost their tower on Wolfe Island. It fell down.
Canadians were right to call it the storm of the century. It was not a stretch for some to refer to it as a 500-year event.
 
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