[QuadList] WEAU-TV, Eau Claire's 1, 947 foot tower collapses-NBC affiliate off-air, so is WAXX-FM.

[Tim Stoffel]

On Wed, 2011-03-23 at 23:05 -0700, Ted Langdell wrote:
> Gray Television's Central Wisconsin NBC affiliate lost it's tower
> about 8:30 p.m., Tuesday, in weather that was icy and windy. 
> 
> 
Words escape me to hear this happened.

I have been to WEAU's transmitter site more than once to see this
enormous tower. I believe that one of my old ham license plates may be
hanging on the wall in their transmitter building.

The tower was so tall, that even standing underneath it, it took three
pictures to catch all of it. I have these scanned somewhere and will
post them.

In one direction, the guy points were nearly half a mile away!

There is now an eyewitness account of the collapse. It was
raining/snowing and windy that night. A neighbor was looking at the
tower, when they heard a snapping sound. The top part of the tower 'went
horizontal and then swung into the lower part' (it is amazing the tower
lights worked to allow this to be seen. This suggests that the tower was
'hinging' on one or two legs). There was a loud bang, and the tower
disappeared from view. This person then confirmed that WEAU was off the
air.

>From the description, it sounds like a top guy wire failed, allowing the
tower to buckle at the next guy level. The falling section may have
sheared the guy wires on the next level, causing that section to
collapse, and so on. From the description, the tower fell in three
distinct parts.

The pictures show that the transmitter building (at least from the
front) was spared heavy damage.

One kind of unique thing about this tower is that the base pier is very
tall, maybe 20 or more feet. I have never seen a tower with such a tall
base pier.

The tower had no elevator, and was of surprisingly light construction
for such a tall tower. A 1,500 foot tower belonging to channel 8 in
LaCrosse, about 40 miles to the south, has an elevator.

Very sad only,
Tim Stoffel