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

[David Crosthwait]

In 1975, I rode up KTVT/KERA's tower at Cedar Hill Texas with a 16mm camera (Arri) to about the 1,000 level (maybe higher) on a cold day in a tiny elevator w/ the transmitter engineer for TV 13. It's a whole different world up there. The tower guys aren't paid enough.

In the late sixties, KDTV's 1600' tower came down, also at Cedar Hill. 

A 1500' tower came down in Houston in the 80's when a gin pole hoisting up an antenna broke. The falling antenna hit a guy wire, either breaking it or gyrating the whole tower via that guy wire. It all came down, killing several people, and all  caught on tape.

In the 80's or 90's, a  NAS jet hit a guy wire at the KXAS/KDFW/WFAA 1680' tower causing structural damage that required the crash effort to build two new towers and abandon the common tower ASAP. The story I heard was that, after the crash (where the pilot died), the tower inspector came down white faced as to how serious the problem was. 

Seems like about once a year one of these tall towers goes down for one reason or another.

David





On Mar 24, 2011, at 1:25 AM, Tim Stoffel wrote:

> 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 
> 
> 
> 
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