KZYZ gets lucky on Laughlin Ridge!
With all our respect and sympathies to all of our friends and neighbors who did not fair as well, I’m pleased to humbly say that the Redwood Fire seems to have gone out of its way to avoid doing catastrophic damage to our transmitter or very vulnerable and exposed antenna sitting on its wooden pole at the CDF Laughlin Ridge Transmitter site.
The transmitter site at Laughing Ridge was the perfect example of the success of defensible space. Traveling up the hill we saw several telephone poles carrying internet, phone and in some cases power burned, melted and turned to ash but, because of a healthy barrier of cleared ground and gravel encircling the tower, antenna and transmitter vault it remained an oasis in the firestorm.
We did see some minor signs of overheating and heavy contamination of our filters. I imagine we will need to do some minor maintenance over the next few months but no major interruption of service is expected.
We are eternally grateful to the CDF and all of the Cal-fire and other folks who did such an amazing job of keeping the ridge protected and combating the assault of fire through out the area and the quick cleaning and clearing the site for inspection.
At the start of the event a fellow tower technician was kind enough to alert me to the coming danger and we reduced power to 50% as a precaution but as of Wednesday afternoon we were able to access the site and return us to full power.
