[BC] Beautiful Transmitters destroyed by Fire or Flood and Other Woes

[Bob Barnswatts]

Over the years once in awhile a person reads of a radio station transmitter building that catches fire and burns down.

Has anyone ever  seen such a mess? I witnessed a tv station transmitter fire one time, Some other part of the building caught on fire and it completely filled the transmitter building with soot and of course the big giand townsend transmitter sucked it all in up in the klystrons and everywhere.   Once enough soot got in the transmitter it started arcing and was off the air but it valiently hung in there longer than I would have expected.  Of course had anyone known the joint was on fire we could have saved a lot of aggravation by turning the 220KW Beast off .  I speculate the damage was all done within minutes with the soot and smoke tho.


While it wasn't a complete burn down of the building it sure may as well have been for all the misery and pain and suffering I had cleaning the transmitter.  I think it may have been easier to have installed a new transmitter than to clean that one piece by piece for days on end.   We had professional fire people come and clean the building  and they did a pretty good job but years later i'd take apart some assembly in the transmitter and find it full of soot, something i had obviously missed in that big walk in type transmitter.

One time I was working for a McMartin 1kw Transmitter daytimer and co-located FM-1H Harris  and the transmitter area was flooding, water was up to and inside the threshold of the building.  The owners wouldn't let me turn off the equipment so it valiently survived that flood never missing a beat.  The in-floor cable raceways were all flooded.  I don't see how thing stayed on the air but they did.  Lucky the water didn't rise but just enough to barely get in the transmitter cabinets and racks.  Another couple inches and there would have been hell to pay.  

I was looking at pictures of some lovely olden days style transmitters today   and wonder how many of these beautiful (sometimes art deco looking) transmitters    burned up in life while on duty or worse at nitetime for a daytimer transmitter left all alone at nite,  or otherwise had something fatal happen to them.

I remember reporting to duty one morning at a daytime station back in the 70's that was co-located studio and transmitter and someone had shot thru the door and barely missed the beauiful transmitter with some hi power bullets.  But luckily no fires.  

There must be some flood and other damage, maybe tornadoes that leave us some stories to tell.

I'm very happy to see someone is setting up an AM daytimer page. Daytimers leave quite an impression on me to this day for great local service.  

 Is there anywhere on the net people have collected old radio station jingles?  I worked at a daytimer once that had all the old jingles from the 40's and 50's on reel to reel tape and file cabinets full of old photos of their air talent and the write ups about how wonderful they were for sales use.  The new owner came in and burned everything up.  That's more tragic than a fire to the transmitter.  Some people have no nostalgia in their bones.

Nostalgic Bob.