Published: February 18, 2008 11:36 pm         

ESPN Sports Radio gets TKO’d

Floodwaters trip circuit breaker, knocking station off air

TERRE HAUTE — ESPN radio, off the air through the weekend, returned to the airwaves briefly Monday, but went off again after efforts to reach the flood-submerged transmission tower.

Brent Holl, station manager for ESPN, was escorted to the tower in a boat by members of the Sugar Creek Fire Department around 2 p.m., where he flipped a circuit breaker to bring the station back on air. ESPN radio stayed on the air for about two hours before going out again.

The Terre Haute station, at 1300 AM, went off the air after floodwaters from recent storms caused the circuit breaker to be tripped.

Doug Edge, general manager of Crossroads Communication, said engineers from Fort Wayne will make another attempt to restore coverage this afternoon.

The tower, near the Wabash River on the west side of Terre Haute, is one of two operated by ESPN radio. The other tower is in Brazil, and provides the signal for 1130 AM.

The station is still broadcasting on 1130 AM and online at www.espnsportsradio.com.

Holl and the volunteer firefighters entered the water at Lazy “L” Lake in a boat provided by the Sugar Creek Fire Department. It took them about 30 minutes to get to the tower.

Sketch Brumfield, operations manager for Crossroads Communications, said the station became aware of the outage on Friday. Efforts to restart the power remotely were unsuccessful.

Engineers tried to access the antenna in the evening on Saturday, but high floodwaters and icy conditions made it too dangerous.

Brumfield said the same thing happened about five years ago; even though the area around the antenna regularly floods, it is usually not so bad.

Saturday night’s high-school basketball game between Rockville and Terre Haute South Vigo was moved to the CROCK 92.7 FM station to provide coverage in Terre Haute.

Listeners can find out programming changes as well as the status of the 1300 AM signal online at www.espnsportsradio.com.

Deb Kelly can be reached at (812) 231-4254 or deb.kelly@tribstar.com.