(By Michael Zwerling) On Saturday, August 19, the station I own, KSCO-AM, planned to air a program about how to prepare for the next large earthquake. Ironically, we lost Pacific Gas And Electric Company power during the first few minutes of the program – our generator kicked in but utility power returned minutes later. And that happened several times, over and over during the day.
Each time power cycled, it put massive stress on our solid-state transmitter, internal computer systems, our computer and internet-dependent phone systems, our website, app, streaming services, and our generator and its automatic transfer switches.
As a result, our backup generator system failed – and we were knocked off the air – and out of business, for who knows how long, totally at the mercy of Pacific Gas And Electric, which was very difficult to even contact. When we were able to talk to a human at PG&E, we were given no information other than that there was an outage in the vicinity of the radio station, and that they were waiting to dispatch a service crew.
Power was finally restored… Monday at 9am.
What did we learn from this experience?
The most important thing is that advances in technology have made us more vulnerable than ever during a local emergency or disaster. I’ve known for years that KSCO would no longer be able to serve our communities in the stellar way we have during past emergencies – today there is no such thing as telephone service that is not internet-dependent. Chances are internet and cellphone service would be down in almost ANY local emergency or disaster.
Despite this, we have become so dependent on computer systems and have totally failed to plan and install dependable backup systems to deploy when disasters strike!
What’s the solution? Go back to the old analog phone system that operated independently of PG&E power? That would allow our audience to assist us in providing emergency updates – as we could do in the past BEFORE the current internet-dependent phone system came to be.
Somehow I don’t think that is going to happen – it would be like switching back to ice boxes from refrigerators.
So what then? Should our communities rely on HAM radio operators in an emergency or is it time for radio to make a plan?
Michael Zwerling is the Owner of KSCO-AM and KOMY-AM in Monterey-Salinas-Santa Cruz-San Jose, CA. He can be reached at [email protected].
MZ is part of the judenrat
We have to have shore power back for at least 30 minutes before we can switch back. I’m sure there is a way for your engineer to program your transfer switch.
Other than that, I’m with Carter above. Lock the generator on and leave it on. During Hurricane Ian last year, we had a primary 3 phase switch arcing from the wind and the rain behind our studio. We never lost power, but why take the chance? We started the studio generator, locked it on, and left it on until the storm passed.
Hope this helps–
The second time it did this I would have put the station on the generator and left it there until shore power became reliable again. Letting it sit there and switch back and forth is asking for trouble….as you found out.