FORGOT TO PUT IT ON HIS TO DO LIST – A contractor was installing a slab for a new transmitter building for WNIX in Greenville, MS when his concrete truck backed into a guy wire, toppling the 199-foot structure. According to the station’s President and CEO, Larry Fuss, the unnamed contractor failed to think the felling was important enough to contact the station. Fuss said he found the collapsed structure the following day after a visit to the site when his engineer couldn’t get the AM transmitter to come back up remotely. (Photos Credit: Larry Fuss)
While a contractor’s crew was attempting to finish a slab pour on Sunday for a foundation being installed for WNIX’s new transmitter building in Greenville, MS, a concrete truck driver backed into a guy wire, causing the station’s 199-foot tower to collapse.
Larry Fuss, President and CEO of Delta Radio, the owner of the news-talk AM radio station, made the announcement late Monday on Facebook, stating: “Major catastrophe yesterday at WNIX. The concrete truck that was there to pour the foundation for our new transmitter building backed into a guy wire and pulled the tower down. All 199 feet of it. Both WNIX-AM 1330 and the FM 101.1 repeater (translator) are off the air.”
Fuss informed Radio World that the contractor “didn’t even bother to call us and let us know what happened. We didn’t discover the damage until Monday when we couldn’t get the AM transmitter to come back up remotely.”
No injuries were reported, although it could have been disastrous for the onsite workers. In 2010, two Alabama tower technicians were killed when a bucket truck clipped a guy wire, causing the 199-foot structure they were working on to collapse.
AT THE NEAREST TRUCK STOP, this tanker truck driver likely changed his drawers and purchased lottery tickets. On May 7, 2008, the driver was heading down busy four-lane Lemont Rd. in Lemont, IL, during morning rush hour, not knowing that a car had just crashed into a guy anchor of a Crown Castle 300-foot tower and it was heading in his direction. Miraculously, he wasn’t injured when the tower crashed behind his cab and in front of the tank that was carrying a highly flammable chemical, benzene.
In 2016, fortunately, tragedy was averted when a 340-foot guyed tower crashed to the ground in West Palm Beach, FL, when a tractor moving sludge from one part of the city’s water treatment plant hit the guy wire. A new self-supporting tower next to it was undamaged.
It hasn’t been a great start in 2024 for broadcasters. In mid-January, thieves sabotaged a 500-foot tower in Oklahoma in order to steal the coaxial cable. They were arrested two days later.
On February 2, Brett Elmore, owner of WJLX radio, a nondirectional AM radio station, went on Facebook and announced that someone had made off with his 200-foot-tall guyed tower from a site in Jasper, Alabama, that is located at a dead-end near the sprawling Mar-Jac poultry plant.