500 Commercial Street

Jordan Wilder takes you for a tour of 500 Commercial Street, Manchester NH.

Hello everybody, last Thursday night about midnight hurricane force winds ripped and folded over a part of the radio station roof. It took a section of the sprinkler system with it. We estimate 50,000 gallons of water ran into the station. Dave Ashton our PD was in the station at the time checking on the MILL which had gone off the air. The alarms went off; he got out of the place, called me from the parking lot. When we walked in and up to our space on the 5th floor, with the Fire Dept at 1 in the morning, the water was gushing and there was 2 inches + of standing water throughout the entire station.

Since then all of the floors and sub floors have been ripped up along with lower bottom walls to begin drying and prevent mold from growing. We (along with everybody on all five floors of the mill building) have been evacuated. For a few days we ran some live programming out of the Channel 9 conference room. Yesterday, a few programmers were allowed to stay and keep us on the air. Both transmitter sites were without power. The generator at the FM site developed a vapor lock in the propane line knocking all four stations off for awhile. At our AM site, branches came down on power lines and the power company has been less than communicative as we restore power and keep us on with a household generator. At one point 330,000 homes in NH had no power. All stations now on the air.

We will be operating the station in a rented space at Columbia Circle in Merrimack about twenty minutes away for the next few months. We start moving today. The entire building was completely flooded.




The Manchester Radio Group staff has been totally engaged, cooperative, flexible, as well as our leadership team at Saga. Service Master is handling the restoration and is 100% professional and capable. Our GC is already drawing up plans for a rebuild. We are all staying positive.

Thank God nobody was electrocuted!!!

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• 500
• Commercial
• Street
• Manchester
• radio
• storm
• flood
• WZID
• 95.7
• wind
• roof

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