From http://www.koinlocal6.com/content/news/breakingnews/story/Broken-wire-endangers- homes/B-v106rjJEel37hzNavPJA.cspx

Broken wire endangers homes

Last Update: 1:48 pm

The Sylvan Tower that broadcasts the KOIN Local 6 signal has a broken guy wire. A guy wire is a tensioned cable designed to give support to structures.
The tower in question is located in the West Hills of Portland and is supported by multiple wires. The guy wire that broke is located near the top and on the southeast side of the tower.
Police have been notified.
There is potential the tower could fall, which has prompted police to close Skyline between Fairview and Barnes, and 57th Streets in the West Hills. Traffic is being diverted to keep the public safe.
No evacuations or road closures are being ordered at this time.
A repair crew specializing in tall tower repair has been dispatched and due on the scene before 2:30.
The wire broke somewhere around 10 in the morning.
The major concern is if the tower fell, it could bring down another tower in the same area with it and possibly damage homes in the vicinity.

Wow!

They are lucky the tower didn't buckle and come down when the guy wire broke!

Whoa. Leaping lizards! Getting my hard hat and led suit on & tuning into channel 8 in case it falls.

All the guy cables of the towers at Sylvan are segmented by insulators because of the co-located 970 station.

The guy cable broke at one of the insulator brackets.

This broken east guy cable is attached at the second guy level from the top of the tower. After it broke, the top half of the cable crashed into the tower, damaging the CBS Radio Portland FM panel antenna.

Seacomm Erectors will be the repair crew.

Earlier pictures from a few years ago are at http://www.sbe124.org/Tours/Portland/Sylvan/sylvan.html

tower would have buckeled if a gal wire broke.was theguy wire tower problem related to snow/ice??
just curious!!?any other snhwon/ice tower issues aroud town during recent arctic blast??

Link to what we definitely would not want to happen again!

I'm confused... the new CBS panel is higher than the second guy level (I think)... is the broken guy on the older tower ?

>>>just curious!!?any other snhwon/ice tower issues aroud town during recent arctic blast??<<<

KPDX digital signal is currently off the air.

The new CBS panel is not affected, but it is not yet working either.

The broken guy is on the older tower.

While the broken cable is below the current CBS antenna, the reflected power jumped way up when the cable broke, and the CBS stations switched to their four backup antennas and one backup site.

KOIN TV had a story about it on their 5 and 5:30 PM newscasts.

>>>just curious!!?any other snhwon/ice tower issues aroud town during recent arctic blast??<<<

Yes. Grey Haertig had a couple pieces of ice go through his roof. One continued through the floor and into a downstairs bathroom. Thank heavens nobody was hurt.

Repairs at Stonehenge are underway. We are busy swapping out a dish at the 500' level. As always, it has been a distinct pleasure to work with James Boyd. I do not exaggerate when I say that our city has some of the very best engineers in the business.

Several of the smaller cell, wi-fi and repeater arrays also sustained damage.

The FM broadcast antennas were not affected and the deicing system worked just fine.

Is the damage to the current main antenna such that they'll have to continue using the auxiliary antennas until the new one is ready to be put into service?

I just got off the phone with James Boyd. Seacomm will attempt to reattach the broken guy cable TONIGHT!

Earlier, the structural engineer had Radio Tower Company loosen the other two guy cables at that level to take the stress off of the tower.

I'm sure that once the tower is stabilized they will have a hands-on look at the antennas on the tower in daylight.

Kent, thanks for the updates! I hope you counted yourself when reading my comment about local engineers.

Broadcast Tower Services has a long day ahead replacing the 910 feed under the top deck. This storm was really a monster and many crews are scrambling to get things fixed.

It is my sincere wish that everyone on the Sylvan site stays safe, the wind stays calm, the weather stays mild and swift repairs can be made.

Folks, if your heart works that way, send a prayer out for all the people that bring this magical thing we call broadcasting into your lives.

If anybody needs a hand holding something up there on the tower, I'm available!

Did you see the interview with the neighbors that were told to evcuate? They live that close, so they should expect an accident at any time?
How is over the air tv reception when you live a block away from the tower?

Itsvern:

They probably have cable or satellite :-)

They probably can pick up KOIN on their toilet!

And people with a mouth full of braces don't need a radio.

I don't envy those guys doing that job, I hate heights!

I "enjoyed" (not) the comments from a couple of neighbors. They were all pissed that the streets were closed and such.

Gee, sorry for all those hearty engineers risking themselves to keep you safe there, numnuts!

AND one of the 970 towers has been there since 1934.

At least one TV towers has been there since the 50s.

Towers don't fall over like trees without a lot of careful coordination. When something breaks, the intact guy cables keep a leash on the pieces.

I think closing the streets mainly keeps the gawkers away.

Anyway, Seacomm got the guy cable patched together and reinstalled today, so the streets are open again, and the tower will be safe through the higher winds tomorrow.

They are going to inspect both towers tomorrow.

Happy New Year!

"At least one TV towers has been there since the 50s."
From what I remember, both TV towers came down in '71. Only the two AM towers were left standing in Feb. According to KQ4, they put up an older tower that was taken down in the '60's back on its old mount and put CH6 back on in a short period of time on that while they put up the "new" tower, which is the one that was the main tower until the new "DTV" tower went up.

During the inspection, they found that when the end of the broken guy cable fell against the tower it put a huge dent in one of the two feedlines to the CBS panel antenna.

Plus, one of the bays was previously damaged by the ice storm.

And, as luck would have it, the damaged bay is connected to the good feedline, and the good bay is connected to the dented feedline?

Of course! That's just the way it works. :o)

Stories and pictures of ice damage at Stonehenge, Skyline, Sylvan, and now flooding in Tacoma.

http://www.sbe124.org/newsletters/pdx0109/

The Sylvan FM's and 95.5 KXTG sound like they're running at reduced power. The signals are very "fuzzy" here in Eugene.

Someone could be doing maintanance this morning. They go to a back up ant. system, when they work on any station.

Sheesh! The falling ice blocks from Stonehenge look like meteors thru the roof. Thanks for the great pictures Kent!

any station ever been actually hit by a meteor and knocked off??K-UFO??K-NYE??

I think there was one at Hudson's Bay but it's been years.

Just ask a meteorologist!

A little background information about the KOIN Transmitter Site from my meager knowledge.

The West AM tower has been in place since 1931 when KOIN-AM first occupied the property wich was purchased from the Catholic Archdiocese (and has some interesting use covenants - no restaurants, gas stations and a few others), but as part of the Sylvan Tower formation in was strengthened and the number of guy points doubled to prevent a failure of it from taking down the brand new 1999/2000 (it was a very wet year with construction beginning in March 1999 and completing in July 2000) 1,000 foot tower.

(At least) three towers have fallen at the site. The East AM tower fell during the Columbus Day storm of 1962. In 1971 the 1,000 foot TV tower that was erected circa 1963 had an insulator fail on one of its three guy levels and collapsed taking the adjacent circa 1956 600 foot tower down with it.

There is also the 275 foot circa 1953 auxiliary tower on the site that was there until removed some time after the 1963 1,000 footer was put up. When the towers fell in 1971 that tower was still sitting on Pacific Tower's lot and was re-erected to provide service to KOIN-TV and KOIN-FM until the tall tower could be replaced. The Channel 6 antenna on the auxiliary tower came from KHQ in Spokane where it was no longer in use and was lying on the ground.

Around 1989 the older 1,000 foot tower was significantly strengthened and the guy points increased from three levels to six levels to accommodate the KNMT analog antenna and the now CBS FM panel antenna and to meet updated EIA standards of the time.

The new tower's design specification was to withstand a 100 mile per wind with panel broadcast antennas between the DTV antenna on the top of the tower all the way down to the 500 foot level. LeBlanc, who fabricated and constructed the tower, said it was one of the most stout towers they had built using not quite twice the steel that a 1,000 foot tower normally would require. The guy cables are equally sized with the top guy set requiring a special hoist to lift the 44,000 pounds of cable and insulators.

Had the older tower not have been strengthened in 1989 it could quite possibly have failed and taken down all of the other towers in the process due to the proximity of the towers to each other and the intermingled guy cables.

It should also be noted that in all three tower collapses nothing left the property. They all zig-zaged their way to the ground as shown in the photos that are available. Because of the weight of the insulators in the guy cables they were unable to whiplash as they came down and plopped to the ground.

There have also been two aviation events to affect the site - both affecting the East AM Tower. In the first, I don't know the date, a private plane's wing clipped the tower and successfully recovered. In the second, March 1984, another private plane went between guy levels and crashed in Mt. Calvary Cemetery killing the three members of the family on board.

Lee

I think this might be the first aviation event:

http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?ev_id=631&key=0

But it says the plane struck a 555 ft TV tower... sounds like one of the radio towers to me.

Jr tech: Interesting to note, after the October 9, 1970 airplane hits the tower, it falls less than five months later on February 27, 1971 during an Ice Storm.

Lee: That's close. KOIN began operation from the new "Barnes Hill" transmitter site on November 20, 1932 at 11:35am. KOIN had moved from it's original site on "Mt. Calvary Hill" which is across Barnes Rd. on the North side. The first KOIN towers at Barnes Hill were two 300 footers, 600 feet apart for its flat top.

The first KOIN tower to fall happened on March 21, 1940 at about 3:30pm. KOIN was erecting two Ideco 400 foot replacement towers when the 2nd partly completed structure swayed , buckled and fell while guy wires were being tightened. Damage was estimated at $5,000. This accident held up KOIN's 5kw night power increase which wouldn't take effect until a replacement was put into service which occurred on August 11, 1940.

Craig_adams:

I may be wrong, but I think that the 1970 incident involved one of the radio* towers (likely the East tower). The tower(s) that fell during the 1971 ice storm were the TV towers.

The NTSB report says "555 foot TV tower". Both AM towers are nearly 170 Meters tall or about 555 feet. My guess is that the NTSB report was VERY correct about the height of the tower, but not it's purpose.

Here's a link to a detailed study of icing-related tower failures.