(By Michael Zwerling) On Saturday, August 19, the station I own, KSCO-AM, planned to air a program about how to prepare for the next large earthquake. Ironically, we lost Pacific Gas And Electric Company power during the first few minutes of the program – our generator kicked in but utility power returned minutes later. And that happened several times, over and over during the day.
Each time power cycled, it put massive stress on our solid-state transmitter, internal computer systems, our computer and internet-dependent phone systems, our website, app, streaming services, and our generator and its automatic transfer switches.
As a result, our backup generator system failed – and we were knocked off the air – and out of business, for who knows how long, totally at the mercy of Pacific Gas And Electric, which was very…
