KICY Resumes Broadcasting AM Signal

The radio station resumed broadcasting at 6:30 a.m. on Monday, according to general manager Dennis Weidler. "We were working late into the night Sunday night," he adds.

The station had been knocked off the air August 17 when an early morning fire destroyed a tuning house at the base of one of the station's three towers. Workers rerouted a transmission line to the station's western tower so that it can broadcast a 10,000-watt non-directional signal. The signal allows the station to broadcast across western Alaska and into Russia, but not as far as previously, Weidler says. The station is broadcasting 24 hours a day.

No cause for the fire has been officially determined, but Weidler says he believes it was a grounding problem. He believes the problem will be corrected when repairs to the tower are made.

Workers from the organization that installed the tower six years ago are scheduled to arrive next week to determine how to proceed with repairing the current structure. "The base of the tower is leaning dramatically," Weidler says. "The tower is in danger of falling."

Weidler says one option is to take down the tower, improve it with a better ground and then reset it on pilings driven into the permafrost. "That would give it a better ground," he adds.

Rebuilding the tuner house will not be possible until next summer, Weidler says.

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