CA Radio: Stations Forced Off Air By Wine Country Wildfires

With fires sweeping through Santa Rosa and Sonoma County, disrupting phone and computer connections in many areas, many residents tried to turn to radio for immediate information on evacuation orders and the spread of flames.

But, according to The Press-Democrat,  with several stations knocked off the air when transmitters that proved difficult..

One of five stations owned by Amaturo Sonoma Media Group was off the air, but its talk-news flagship, News/Talk KSRO 1350 AM / 103.5 FM, broadcast continuous news and bulletins, which were carried on its three sister stations still on the air.

That continued for 24 hours, starting early Monday. Morning anchor Pat Kerrigan stayed to work a 12-hour shift.

“We switched all of our FM stations over to KSRO’s coverage,” said the group’s president, Michael O’Shea. “We have five reporter-anchors, and then we put many of our other people on the air. Everybody in the building has on-air experience.”

With official sources busy with the fires and evacuations, getting accurate, detailed information proved difficult, especially in the early hours, leading to some mistakes.

The Mount Barham transmitter failure near Santa Rosa also silenced Latino 95.5 FM (Translator K238AF)  but its three sister stations — KRSH 95.9 FM , Exitos, KSXY 101.1 FM — continued to broadcast, said Andre de Channes, morning on-air host at KRSH.

KRCB 90.1 FM’s main transmitter was also down, said B.J. Griffith, an on-air personality with the Rohnert Park-based public broadcasting radio station.

“Our translator at 90.9 serving downtown Santa Rosa is up, with our signal streaming at www.krcb.org and we are updating info on air as we get it,” Griffith said by email.

Getting fire information in Spanish was a particular challenge Monday.

“I woke up in the middle of the night and ran KSRO’s feed in English because we had nothing else,” said Edgar Avila, program director at bilingual Santa station KBBF 89.1 FM. “Later on in the day we had sporadic updates and then I played a Spanish-language national stream. Tuesday morning starting at 6 o’clock, we had volunteers, with three or four people in the studio, ready to give updates.”

El Patron, a Spanish-language station at KRRS 1460 AM, also affected by the transmitter loss, was off the air Monday but began airing information from fire and police officials on Tuesday, said Marco Canseco, who works at the station’s Santa Rosa office.