Many Santa Barbara radio stations that went off the air with storm-related power issues last week have come back.
Flooding and washouts from the Jan. 9 storm have badly damaged Gibraltar Road, one of the main access roads to the Gibraltar Peak broadcast transmitter site.
Multiple power poles fell down along the road, tower operator John Franklin said, and some of the backup generators weren’t working as of Monday.
By Thursday, many of the affected stations were back – including KJEE, which has been celebrating its return with humor.
“We figured out what went wrong – it was this button! *static noise*” said one radio spot this week.
Backup generators are powering broadcast equipment because Southern California Edison hasn’t fully restored power to all the customers affected by the Gibraltar Road-area outage from storm damage.
SCE representative Ben Gallagher said the main challenge in restoring power has been the lack of access, because of all the “flooding and land movement” during the storm.
“There are points of the road up there, Gibraltar Road, that are completely wiped out,” he said.
The company can’t get its big trucks up the road and getting all the equipment to the site is taking longer than usual, he said.
On Friday, Edison crews were on site digging holes for two new power poles and they also plan to install about 3,000 feet of wire, Gallagher said.
They’ve already restored power to two transformers and were working on a third.
Crews expect to fully restore power to the area by the end of next week, he added.