Some of the Alabama Forestry Commission’s (AFC) key roles are to protect wildlife, such as inventorying gopher tortoise burrows to improve their habitat. However, its overriding mission is to protect forests from harm. Unfortunately, the state agency failed miserably to protect a Deatsville AFC communications technician last year. As a result, Brett Savage died when a guyed tower that was …
Toppling of Nebraska 300-foot guyed tower might be investigated as an act of domestic terrorism
The Furnas County Sheriff’s Office (FCSO) has opened an investigation after a communications tower south of Oxford, Nebraska was intentionally destroyed. The sheriff’s office said the tower, owned by Strayer Communications, was toppled and destroyed on Saturday. Their initial findings indicated intentional damage to a guy wire that was cut and resulted in complete structural failure of the tower, causing …
Austin ice storm’s power outages complicated by 500-foot tower that decimated transmission lines
Over 96% of Austin Energy customers in Austin, TX, currently have power after last week’s ice storm, and the utility expects to have close to full service by Sunday, February 12. Restoring power in some areas can be a multi-day effort, especially when utility equipment is in hard-to-reach areas, such as a greenbelt, or buried under extremely heavy debris. One …
Either Mother Nature or a deficient design caused a New York American Tower monopole to collapse
UPDATE: February 3, 2023 – An American Tower representative has informed Wireless Estimator that the Fred A. Nudd monopole that collapsed in Depew, NY, during a winter blizzard was not subject to the litigation with Nudd and would have been out of scope for any remedial work required to ensure that it complied with design standards. This site was part of …
Vandals destroy three 410-foot towers, unaware their crime would backfire and gift a religious broadcaster
The FBI and local authorities are investigating the felling of three AM broadcast towers owned by Truth Broadcasting Co. in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, each one on a different day within less than three weeks. The first collapse witnessed by a nearby homeowner, Cliff Orgnon, occurred on December 21, 2022. After the three towers were destroyed, WSJS went off the air. …
Fighting Mother Nature for 44 years, two tall towers in South Dakota finally succumb
The massive winter storm that moved through the Plains Wednesday morning knocked down a 1,700-foot TV tower and an 800-foot broadcast tower in northeastern South Dakota just outside the boundaries of Garden City. The 1,700-foot guyed tower, constructed in 1978, is owned by Nextar and was the home for CBS affiliate KDLO-TV and KDLO-FM When the tower fell just before …
Strong winds against ice loading shears off top half of Montana tower
The Lincoln Volunteer Fire Rescue reported strong winds knocked over a communications tower near Lincoln, Montana last week. The Stonewall communications tower was erected 30 years ago and had its top half sheared off. Fire Chief Zach Muse said the loss of the Stonewall tower will impact all digital communication for agencies in the Lincoln area from law enforcement to fire. …
Cell tower collapse kills seven children outside of a school in Jakarta
Police say at least ten people, including seven children, were killed in Bekasi on the outskirts of Jakarta, Indonesia, this morning after a truck crashed into a telecommunications tower near a bus stop and toppled the structure in a busy area where school children were on the street during a morning recess. The children’s ages ranged from 7 to 11 …
Alabama tower collapse ends a tower tech’s life, leaving behind his wife and five children
A 36-year-old tower technician and father of five who worked for the Alabama Forestry Commission (AFC) died Wednesday afternoon in a “tragic accident,” the agency said yesterday. Communications technician Brett Savage with the AFC and a resident of Deatsville, in Elmore County, was killed instantly when the communications tower he was helping a crew remove collapsed in Washington County, the …
Tornado takes out an ATC 150-foot monopole as Ida winds its path of destruction through the northeast
An American Tower Corp. (ATC) 150-foot monopole collapsed Wednesday when a Hurricane Ida-spawned tornado tore through Upper Dublin Township in Pennsylvania. Although the structure was designed and constructed in 2008 with a basic wind speed of 90 mph as required EIA/TIA-222 Rev. G, the structure was no match for the EF-2 tornado that touched down in the township with winds …
AT&T claims an above average restoration percentage as carriers bring sites back up in Louisiana
Through the dedicated resources of the men and women on the front lines providing logistics and services, cell site outages in Hurricane Ida-affected parishes in Louisiana have been reduced to 28.5%, from Tuesday’s 38.1%, according to the FCC’s September 1, 2021 daily communications report. Within a day, hard-hit Assumption Parish went from an outage of 94.7% to 42.1%, with Terrebonne …
FBI shelling out $5,000 reward for info about sabotage of Texas communications towers
The Dallas Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Wichita Falls Police Department are asking for the public’s assistance in identifying the individual(s) responsible for the damage caused to two communications towers in Wichita Falls, Texas. The FBI is offering a reward of up to $5,000 for information leading to the identification, arrest and conviction of the individual …
Plaintiffs settle for $3.2 million in 2018 Missouri tower collapse that killed company owner
Missouri State University and other defendants have reached a $3.2 million settlement in a 2018 deadly television tower collapse in Fordland, Missouri. The Springfield News-Leader reports the university’s attorney, Rachael Dockery, notified the school’s governing board of a “global settlement” in all the lawsuits filed about the incident. According to court documents, on March 10, 2021, a letter was presented …
Ice isn’t nice to century-old Champaign, Illinois self-supporting tower
A 175-foot self-supporting tower collapsed Monday afternoon about 2:15 p.m. off of Meridian Drive near North Duncan Road in Champaign, IL. The tower is owned by Alliance Communications and company owner Stu Toft informed Wireless Estimator that the four-legged base sections, 115 feet, are about 100 years old. They originally were on the banks of the Mississippi River and were then relocated to Champaign. …
Guy wire cutting crime spree topples one Texas tower, destabilized a 1,000-footer
A tall tower crew is on site in Wichita Falls, Texas, stabilizing a 1,050-foot TV broadcast tower owned by Nexstar Media Group, Inc., off 4500 Seymour highway. It is one of two towers that had guy wires cut early Friday morning, with a 450-foot structure giving way to actions of those that authorities have stated committed a “serious felony”. The …
Family of man killed in Missouri TV tower collapse sues structure’s owner and design engineer
The family of the owner of a tall tower erection company killed when a 1,891-foot TV tower collapsed near Fordland, Missouri in 2018 has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the Missouri State University Board of Governors (MSU) and South Carolina-based Tower Consultants, Inc. (TCI) who contracted with MSU to retrofit their structure as part of the FCC’s repacking effort. Steve Lemay, …
After falling over 200 feet off of steel, high school junior is preparing for the 300-foot gridiron
Last year, Uriah King was a standout running back for the Brownwood, Texas Freshman Lions and looked forward to a junior year of equally outstanding achievements. But on June 1, while the tower tech was at approximately the 225-foot level on a 359-foot tower while disassembling an AT&T antenna mount in Seale, Alabama for Texas-based King Strong Tower Enterprises, the …
Maine station engineer dies after falling from a ham radio tower
The Knox County, Maine Sheriff’s Office has confirmed that a Bangor resident fell from a ham radio tower in a residential area of Union. Authorities said that at approximately 1:00 p.m. yesterday, James Larner, 74, was on the structure when he fell, according to a friend who was on site when the accident occurred off of Olson Farm Lane. Larner, who …
Update: 8/31/20: Laura thrashes Louisiana’s broadcasters and mobile networks
UPDATE – August 31, 2020 – Louisiana’s cell sites that were out of service continued to improve since yesterday, with 5.5% of the cell sites out of service in the affected parishes. However, hard-hit Cameron Parish still had 72% of its cell sites out. LOUISIANA AFFECTED PARISHES Date Cell Sites Served Cell Sites Out Percent Out Cell Sites Out Due to …
Elderly Vertical Bridge AM tower goes horizontal after being walloped by 130 mph winds
A 310-foot self-supporting tower owned by Vertical Bridge that broadcast WMT-AM radio’s signal throughout Iowa collapsed last week after tornado-type winds swept through Linn County. According to the National Weather Service, a powerful line of severe thunderstorms known as “Derecho” tracked across Minnesotta, eastern Iowa, and northwest Illinois in the afternoon of August 10. Straight line winds were estimated to …
