[BC] KOMO Fire

[Clay Freinwald]

Here is a recently received update from Jim Dalke, Chapter 16 SBE Chairman, who volunteered to help with the disaster.   Clay

>>>>

This is the latest on the Fisher Plaza event.  

A small electrical fire at Fisher Plaza brings down six broadcast stations
Jim Dalke
 
A small electrical fire brought down two TV and four radio stations at 11:25 PM Thursday evening at Fisher Plaza.  The loss of power also disrupted numerous web sites with servers collocated in the Plaza building.  The broadcast stations that went dark were Fisher's KOMO-TV, KUNS-TV, KOMO-AM, KOMO-FM, KVI-AM, and KPLZ-FM.  Major web sites went down including Microsoft's Bing Travel, Seattle's Mars Hill Church and Authorize.net, a credit card verification Service.  There were also reports of interruptions to Verizon's DSL service in the Pacific Northwest.
 
 
Vaporized 5000 amp bus
 
The electrical fire apparently ignited as a result of a fault in the 5,000 amp, 3 phase 480 volt bus connecting a Seattle City Light transformer vault to the Plaza electrical switch room, located on the second level parking garage under the Plaza building.  All power in the building was lost as a result.  The resulting electrical arc vaporized the copper feed bus and the heat triggered the sprinkling system in the electrical room.  The water from the sprinklers damaged the switching equipment that is designed to transfer power to the building generators when the incoming primary power fails.  There was a foot of water in the switch room before the Seattle Fire Department could make sure the fire was out and turn off the sprinkler system.
 
There are two 2.5 megawatt generators and a 1.5 megawatt generator near the electrical switch room set up to automatically go online and power the building in case the primary Seattle City Light power should fail.  However, only one of the generators was able to come on line, providing backup power to a limited part of the building.  This left all of the broadcast facility and most of the web servers without power.
 
One of two 2.5 megawatt generators
 
Attempts were made to connect the operating generators to the building's multiple riser feeds by bypassing the damaged switch equipment, but because of the damage to the wiring system, it became impossible to accomplish.  Two portable 2.5 megawatt generators were brought in Friday afternoon and parked next to the Plaza building.  Friday evening, the big generators were connected to the buildings riser feeds, and power was restored to the Plaza.  Four of the six stations were back on the air with normal broadcasting late Friday evening.
 
Because of the damage to the electrical switch room equipment, it is likely the damaged equipment will have to be replaced.  The building cannot have power reconnected to the Seattle City Light grid until the new switch equipment is installed and operational, so the big generators may be providing the building power for a few weeks or more.
 
All of the stations originate and switch programming in the building. When the power failed in the middle of the 11 o'clock TV news all of the stations went off the air.  Then smoke from the electrical fire in the underground parking garage began to circulate through the building prompting the fire department to order a complete evacuation.  
 
When the smoke literally cleared and it became apparent it would be more than a few hours before the power could be restored, the staff began to gather what equipment they needed from the studio and moved it to the KOMO-TV transmitter site a mile north of the Plaza on Seattle's Queen Ann hill.  The TV tower has microwave STL links to all of the broadcast transmitters except KOMO-FM.
 
The KOMO-TV staff moved their remote truck and to Kerry Park near the TV transmitter on Queen Ann Hill and were back on the air.  Normally, the station takes their network feed from the satellite dish on the Plaza building, so the engineers arranged a network feed from off air programming from KATU-TV, a Fisher sister station in Portland.  Setting up a temporary studio near the transmitter building would have been a simple task in the analog TV days when you could plug a camera directly into the TV transmitter.  Using a digital camera into a digital switcher and a digital transmitter sometime requires sophisticated timing.  Without the automation at the studio to do the switching and commercial insertion was a challenging task as well.  But they went on the air live at daybreak with the Seattle cityscape and the landmark Space Needle in the background.  There were no local commercials and occasionally the Portland KATU commercials came along with the ABC network feeds.  There were obvious lip sync problems on the temporary program feed from Portland.
 
KOMO AM set up a small mixer on a card table in the TV transmitter building and improvised their all news format with a temporary network feed for national news and local traffic reports.  They had no commercials to broadcast, so they thanked their sponsors regularly for support for commercial free radio for the day.
 
KPLZ-FM set up a similar temporary studio at the TV transmitter.  As he was leaving the dark Plaza building, one of the KPLZ staff was overhead saying he would go on the air with his Ipod if necessary.
 
With limited engineering personnel and resources exhausted, KVI-AM and KUNS-TV remained off the air for the day, returning to the air Saturday morning.
 
 
Fisher Plaza at night
 
Fisher began planning the Plaza in the 90's and finished construction in 2002.  It was designed as a state-of-the-art high-tech building as a hub for the Fisher broadcast stations as well a communications hub for the internet and data industries.  It is reported to be one of the most expensive buildings per square foot in Seattle.
 
The Plaza facility was designed to maintain operations under any natural or man-caused disaster.  It has generators to maintain power for weeks if needed.  The building's infrastructure was designed and constructed to survive an 8.0 magnitude earthquake.