By Don Urquhart, Times Chronicle

For Brock Jackson, the host of Osoyoos radio show Bounce Mornings, he couldn’t have timed it better if he had tried. 

The power outage on Mount Kobau that took two of Bell Media’s radio stations –  Move 99.9 FM and Bounce 102.9 FM  – offline just as he was going on holiday for a week, miraculously came back online the night before he was scheduled to go back on the air. 

Local Bell Media radio stations bounced off the air

“They just turn the power off when I go on vacation,” he laughs speaking with the Times Chronicle on what transpired with the stations going off the air from the evening of Jan. 2 to the evening of Jan. 8.

A combination of a deep freeze, snow and then rain all conspired to create some serious winter weather atop the 1,693 metre (5,554 feet) mountain where the Bell Media transmission tower sits.

“There were two things,” Jackson says. “There was no power to the transmitter, and then our backup power had died. So first they had to get the primary power going and then restore the backup power as well.  

Jackson says Bell Media technical staff along with FortisBC technicians made a couple of attempts to get to the tower, including by helicopter. Unfortunately, as he points out in one of the photos taken from the helicopter, the top of the mountain where the tower is located was completely buried in heavy cloud.

Another attempt was made a day or two later using a snow cat from a company that provides services to power, telecommunications and broadcasting companies. 

“Our engineers went with them and they only got so far before one of the tracks broke because the snow drifts were so high,” with one of the engineers saying the snow drifts were as high as three metres (10 feet), zero visibility and “just completely impossible to get through.”

He also chuckles at the many suggestions the station received on its Facebook page as to how to get up to the transmitter. This included snowshoes and snowmobiles, he said, adding with mock seriousness: “We were considering all the options!”

Having been involved in radio in Osoyoos since 2005, Jackson says he’s experienced the transmitter going down a number of times from severe winter weather including ice build up, as well as one particular summer when wildfires burned the power transmission lines. 

“From what I’ve been told now, it sounds like they have a fix in place so we don’t go through this again, but you never know,” he laughs.   

The situation was finally rectified on Sunday evening and “we were excited when the power came back on!” Jackson says. And in celebration of being back on the air his 8:05 a.m. slot where he normally plays the thematic ABC’s of music, will instead be featuring songs suggested by listeners relating to power and electricity. The power may have gone down, but clearly not the sense of humour. 

Jackson also notes how the incident highlights the importance of local media outlets. “We only have so many media outlets in the community so if the paper can’t print or the website or the radio station is off-line, those are the very few connections we have media-wise to our community.

“It’s just kind of a reminder of how critical we are to the community, because you can only get so much via Facebook.”