MPR’s Joe Kelly reports on the effects from an ice storm in Duluth that left all TV and radio stations off the air. The large 850-foot WDIO broadcast TV tower toppled to the ground due to ice and wind.
The serious ice storm began during the afternoon of March 22, 1991 and ended as the event changed to heavy, wet snow on the 23rd. This event coated the city of Duluth with as much as 6 inches of ice. 4 million pine trees were damaged or destroyed with the heaviest damage at G.C. Andrews State Forest near Moose Lake in Pine County.
Transcripts
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SPEAKER 1: Both of our stations are off the air. All of the FM stations in the Duluth-Superior market are off the air, as are all four of the television stations. We have affiliates from PBS and the three commercial networks.
The most serious problem broadcast-wise is WDIO Channel 10, the ABC affiliate in Duluth. Their tower collapsed last night. And anybody who has ever worked in the broadcast industry, as we have, know that when the tower goes down, you're history.
SPEAKER 2: Not much happens.
SPEAKER 1: Not much happens. So apparently, from what I've been able to glean from broadcast reports on the AM band, the tower at WDIO is about an 800, 850-foot structure, weighing, of course, many tons, and it buckled and collapsed in ice and wind last night around 2:00 or 2:30 in the morning.
Now, people who have been to Duluth, you realize when you drive into town and come over the hill, you see up ahead of you on a large hill just up from the lake from downtown is a farm of broadcast towers. There's about a dozen towers up on top of the hill. It's the highest point in town. So broadcasters have chosen it as a place to broadcast from.
But, of course, it's a subject to high winds. And the ice that we had last night is really, apparently, the culprit and just built up on all of the towers up there, and Channel 10's tower couldn't take it, apparently. And it fell. It nicked the Channel 10 studio, the building there. That's the only television facility to have its studio up there by the transmission towers.
No one was in the building. No one was hurt. So that is fortunate. But they're off the air. And it's not clear when they'll be able to get back on the air. And to be honest, it's not clear when MPR is going to be able to get back on the air either.