Suspicious Fire Forces Little Rock Non-Com Off Air

According to a posting at the station's website, non-com 89.1 KAUR-FM Little Rock was back on-air at restored power Sunday after being knocked off air by a fire at the transmitter site.

KUAR went off the air around 5:30 p.m. on Saturday. The station’s engineer was called and he went to the transmitter site on Shinall Mountain in Little Rock. When he got to the site, the engineer discovered smoke coming out of the building. He tried to go into the building, but the lock that was supposed to be on the door was gone and had been replaced with a new lock. The engineer was unable to open the door.

The Little Rock Fire Department arrived at the scene and broke open the new lock. The fire did not take long to put out but did do a significant amount of damage while it was burning.  The transmitter, which was purchased in 2007, was severely damaged. KUAR General Manager Ben Fry says it’s uncertain at this point whether the equipment can be salvaged.  Fry says the equipment was insured.

Considering the suspicious nature of the fire and the amount of damage, a fire marshall was called out to investigate.

At the scene, officials also discovered part of the fence around the transmitter building had been pulled back and that copper from the tower was missing. The fire department continues to investigate the incident and will file a report in the next few days with its conclusions.

“These are very odd circumstances. We don’t know exactly what’s going on, but it seems pretty suspicious,” says Fry.

Fry says there have been no threats made on the station.

KUAR was slated to move to a new tower site soon.

The station is also urging listeners, to catch the website stream.

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