[TWIAR] Durangoherald.com - Towers atop Missionary Ridge (Colorado) survive; without power

[Greg Williams]

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By Brian Newsome
Herald Staff Writer

Communication towers atop Missionary Ridge remained intact Tuesday but
without power. Despite the loss of juice, those affected found alternatives
and used backup power sources.

Three miles of electric cable leading up to the towers were destroyed by the
fire Monday, said David Waller, spokesman for La Plata Electric Association.
Laying the new cable would take a day or two, but repairs were contingent on
electricians being allowed by fire officials to make repairs.

The loss of power brought a temporary halt to emergency communications,
radio stations and cellular phone services.

In the meantime, tower users found new ways to temporarily restore services.

Emergency communications were restored to the main tower Tuesday by using a
generator, said Jackie Nelson, communication supervisor at Durango-La Plata
Emergency Communications Center, also called central dispatch. Officials
used alternative channels and a second tower for communications after the
outage briefly disrupted some channels Monday.

KSUT-FM, based in Ignacio, lost its biggest listener frequency, 90.1 FM,
after the outage. The frequency serves La Plata County, and it feeds a
signal to Farmington (105.3 FM), Pagosa Springs (105.3 FM) and Gallup, N.M.
(91.7 FM), said Beth Warren, executive director of the radio station. The
Durango frequency, 89.5 FM, remained functional.

KSUT engineers, doing tests via the telephone, believe power surges related
to the outage caused the station�s transmitter to shut off. The transmitter
would normally come back on using a generator, but sometimes the equipment
shuts itself off in response to unusual electrical surges and must be turned
on manually, Warren said. Engineers were hoping to visit the site today,
fire conditions permitting.

The engineers, Scott Henning and Lee Larson, were able to restore broadcasts
to Farmington at 3 p.m. Tuesday with a temporary feed, Warren said. Gallup,
which uses much of KSUT�s programming but runs its own station, was able to
stay on the air but without KSUT programs. The airwaves for Pagosa Springs,
however, remained silent.

Since the outage, Warren said the station has been flooded with phone calls
and has had more hits on its Web site, www.ksut.org.

KPTE-FM, "The Point" (99.7), was back on the air Tuesday. Officials at the
station could not be reached for comment Tuesday night, but Brett Stevens,
program director, said Monday that the station planned to broadcast from its
Durango office until power was restored.

Four Corners Broadcasting currently broadcasts from Smelter Mountain but has
been constructing a new site on Missionary Ridge. Bruce Anderson, director
of engineering, said he planned to visit the site this morning to assess
damage.

"I have no idea what the situation is," Anderson said. "But we are still on
the air with the good old Smelter Mountain sites."

Anderson said the company had hoped to begin broadcasting from the new site
early this summer.

For Alltel Communications customers, cellular phone service was lost from
11:30 p.m. Monday to noon Tuesday, but Alltel technicians were able to
restore service through a generator, said Andrew Carey, Alltel spokesman.
They were aided by safety and fire officials, he said.

"They�re going to run off of that until La Plata County can restore (the
tower) to typical capacity," Carey said.

Verizon Wireless, also affected by the power outage, could not be reached
Tuesday night.

Reach Staff Writer Brian Newsome at brian@durangoherald.com.