The City of Leominster, MA, is firing up its own community radio station in a few weeks. And a big reason for that, according to Mayor Dean Mazzarella, “When we lost cable and we lost everything in the big storms that we had, the two big ones, radio was oftentimes the only thing that’s left.”
That’s what Mazzarella told the local newspaper, the Leominster Champion. The LPFM station that flips on in a few weeks is WLPZ-FM, broadcasting “a format of information, fun, and entertainment in the community.”
Mazzarella said WLPZ would broadcast important emergency information to residents. The “two big ones” he was referring to were an ice storm in 2008 and a big snowstorm a few years ago. “We look at it as almost an emergency radio station, where we can communicate out what’s going on. Almost everybody has a radio with batteries in it, or a crank-up radio, where they can still communicate even if they don’t have electricity.”
