When a radio station in the city experiences a crisis, and can't broadcast from their own studios, I believe the idea is that the competition can offer up an extra studio for temporary use.

Not sure if that's set in stone somewhere in the Canadian Radio Constitution or what.

It happened, and as fate would have it, just a few months before the 'big blackout' in Aug. 2003.  

It was one of the reasons 'RB and CKFM were so well prepared for it.  May 16th 2003, A hydro transformer blew up right in front of the building.  The generators kicked in, and we had power, but the flames were shooting out of the sidewalk and up the side of the building, being radio morons, we were standing in the sales department watching the flames outside the windows .  Anyway, the fire marshal told us to get out.    

We had all types of contingency in place anyway, with bomb tapes and backups, and Bill Carroll ended up going live from his cell-phone while we prepared to zip up to 40 Eglinton.  Studio 1010 was going to be put to good use, and CKFM would have gone from the EZ production room.  Just as we were all assembled in the back parking lot ready to go, the fire marshall allowed 'emergency' staff back into the building to keep the stations on-air.    So we kept the station on-air via Bill and his Cell phone, or Studio 10-1.  .

The power was off for an extended period of time though, which allowed the engineers to know where any weakness' were with routers, UPS, etc.   When the 'big one' hit later that year, it was a piece of cake.  We knew where to string extension cords, what cable-TV amps needed 'external' power, etc.   The biggest concern on the night of the big blackout wasn't 2 St. Clair, it was 301 Front West .

There were broadcast lines between 2 St. Clair and 1331 Yonge but I don't believe they were ever used.

There were also obviously lines between everywhere via the Bell radio board, so you could get anywhere from anywhere in an emergency anyway.

ig.
 

Those stories about 'RB and CHUM were fascinating. But I can’t help wonder what would have happened, despite their mutual agreement to help each other out, if both stations were sent packing by toxic smoke. Then what?
 
A friend of mine reminded me of another much lesser known incident and since he was there that night, I’m pretty sure it’s a true story. And it involves someone who is now a very well known Toronto radio personality.
 
It apparently happened sometime around 1981, when Telemedia-owned CJCL was still at 1430, doing that weird hybrid music-talk format, and located on the top floor of 464 Yonge St. near College. But it was what was on the floor below that caused all the problems.
 
One evening, the newsroom and the night guy noticed a strange odour gradually wafting into the studios. At first, they ignored it, sure it was just temporary. But as the night wore on, the place began to get more and more cloudy, as if a fog had rolled in. Eventually, it was impossible to ignore and it got into the throats, noses and eyes of everyone left in the place, causing them to cough repeatedly. 
 
It turns out the business downstairs was a restaurant of some sort that may have found some unwanted guests in their kitchen. As a result, after hours, they closed down and had the place fumigated using a toxic pesticide. But nobody told anyone in the station upstairs, perhaps forgetting that radio doesn’t close at 7 PM. The fumes slowly began wafting upwards and it just got more and more intense as the hours passed.
 
Shows were still live in those days and it got so bad that eventually a call was put in to the program director, who I believe was Clint Nickerson. His advice – you can’t breathe it in, it’s dangerous and you’ll have to leave.
 
“But we’re on the air,” he was told, “what are we going to do – sign off, leave dead air?” It was a weird dilemma, one I’ve never heard of before, but it was decided the overnight man would cue up a few reel-to-reel tapes with pre-recorded programs (the station wasn't set up for automation back then) and come back every half hour to an hour to start the next tape. Where he went during that time isn’t known, but I’m sure it was a very, very long night for the guy.
 
You know him well, although I wonder if he remembers that strange shift. His name: John Oakley and hopefully he’s in a more healthy environment these days. 

I love these kinds of stories. Here’s another one, although it doesn’t really involve an evacuation. More like an unexpected dislocation.  
 
It happened during the same August 2003 blackout Iain mentions in a post above. The staff at the CityPulse newsroom was trying to get ready for the 6, when the lights – and everything else - went out around 4:12 PM. They managed to get their one generator going (the bare-to-the-bone-financed station wasn’t really prepared for anything like what happened) pulled all their equipment, including the U-matic tape machines, out into the parking lot, and used the generator and their Live Eye to produce a rudimentary newscast.
 
The problem? The power was out everywhere so absolutely no one saw this hour long show that they struggled so mightily and against all odds to get on the air. And even if you were one of the few with electricity, cable was out so you couldn’t see it that way, either. A colleague who was there that day told me everyone kept asking each other, “why are we killing ourselves doing a show that no one can possibly watch?” But they did it anyway, and sure enough, nobody but those involved in the production ever got the chance to actually see it.
 
If memory serves, I think they actually uploaded this show to their website a year later on the first anniversary of the outage. Probably more saw it there than ever saw it on air.    

Hi from 2 St. Clair!!  Yesterday the building was evacuated at 1 PM as we were told the power would likely be completely shut off on the affected grid.  I'm not sure if that actually happened but we have had power outages in the past and our generators have kicked in as they should.  We maintained a skeleton on-air staff through it all.  Between music harddrive, voice tracking and back-up CD's, both stations can withstand unusual situations for probably a day or so. Anything longer than that - I imagine - would become a bit more of an adventure. Also, it is my understanding that in a dire situation, our transmitter sites can be used as a master control.

Not quite .  During the last 'big blackout' the CN tower ended up having to divert generator power to the emergency nav. lighting from the stations, forcing them to lower and finally shut down their transmitters, and rely on those backup ones.

Mike Cleaver wrote:

Most of Toronto's major FMs are on the CN Tower and the signals run through a combiner into one antenna or did when the Tower originally went into operation.   There were generators there that could power everything if the regular grid went down.  

splunge wrote:

at one time, going back to the 80s, the CRTC expected radio stations to have  back up  generators.

Except  that one time, when a terrorist group "Black Monday" called in a bomb threat to the station.  The GM was out of town, so the decision was made to move everything to the Tx site while the police swept the studios.  They found nothing, but Johnny continued finger tapping on the toolbox until it turned out the threat was actually at the Tx.... Then it was a race to get the DJ's out of there....

Damn, you beat me to it. 

Last edited by Hansa (February 16, 2017 3:43 pm)