Friends and others I haven’t talked to in years…

I’ve been on-air since Weds morning at 5:00. We thought we’d be able to drive in until around 11 that morning. When I got the call they were evacuating I came in immediately. Kristin was staying with Stacey the station Manager… they were here just before 4. We almost didn’t get into the station via truck… and he almost didn’t get out… we’re boating in and out at this point but only 1 trip in and out per day… We boated Kristin out yesterday… she did the updates with me until around 11 then covered the rest of the afternoon while I was on the phone with engineers working out a backup plan…

Thankfully we didn’t have to put the backup plan in place… We do have several backups of all data located off-site, however, the other concern is the radio station being overtaken by water forcing us to shut down before it causes major damage or worse, electrocution. Power, oddly enough, has been solid, even though we’ve got a genset and enough diesel to last 3-4 days. If we need to move. here is a tower farm about 8 miles away with a monster non directional AM tower that is setup for ham radio contesting… and a 500 foot tower used for em-comm… all generator powered. We’ve got a 250 watt FM exciter and a single bay antenna as well as processing lined up and a 60 watt am transmitter on our frequency in case we need to relocate. It wouldn’t be as good as the 50,000 watts we put out, regularly and would cover the county…

My most important concern, besides the employees here are the listeners that are affected by this water… I’ll do whatever it takes to keep us on-air and the engineering team that I have lined up should be able to make this happen quickly if it comes to an evac.

We nearly evacuated the station as water in the crawl space was threatening our power supply… we’ve been able to drop that significantly and are constantly pumping…

She was amazing… She’ll be my relief this morning at 8… I’m going to try to lay down for 2 hours and then prep for the 5a news… WGFA’s News Director was here before I was here Weds… He is also the “part time” County Emergency Services Director. That’s a joke… the job is full time x2 as it is… plus we’re a very large county, and now he’s doing this… IL EMA are in town surveying… Cty has been declared a State Disaster agency…

Details at http://www.wgfaradio.com

Look for aerial footage of the flooding here… http://www.myfoxchicago.com/myfox/

Most recent pics of flooding are at http://www.flickr.com/wgfaradio

Some others at http://www.flickr.com/jrkaiser

My home is fine… Sheldon is 10 miles away and much higher… even though the drainage around that area is very bad, we had 4-6 inches around the area and my entire property was a lake… but the home and garage/studio are dry… a little water in the crawl space. Diana and the dogs are doing well, lonely, but well… and SAFE.

We’ve got water lapping at both doors… never been this high… ever… Rarely comes within a few hundred yards of the station with the regular floods… Yes, I said regular… About once ever couple of years… Jan 2005 was very bad because it froze and there was no where for the water to go… then it got down to 20 below.

This year, we had a lot of snow melt last week, and now the rain.

That’s the update… I need to get some sleep before I do the 5am news… I had 90 minutes yesterday and need to get some beauty sleep.

We’re fine… the community isn’t, but we are…

Justin
_____________________________

Here to Help!
Justin Kaiser & Associates
Creative Identity Group
Voiceovers and Internet Marketing
Phone/FAX - (888) 519-9575
http://www.JustinKaiser.com
http://www.CreativeIdentityGroup.com
_____________________________