By JONATHAN MOHR

Eagle Staff Writer

Local communications signals, including the broadcast of three area radio stations, were disrupted late Monday evening when a 475-foot tower at Bridgeway’s Deer Road facility came crashing down.

Bridgeway officials said an unofficial survey of the damage seemed to indicate a stake securing one of the tower’s guywires became corroded, which allowed it to be pulled loose from 12 feet of concrete.

High winds were reported Monday evening, which Bridgeway founder/president/CEO Jim Starnes said may have “just exacerbated the problem.

“It probably was in a state that it would have happened at some point in the future, given extra stress,” he noted.

A structural engineer visited the site Thursday to offer a professional assessment of the situation.

Kim Limkeman, who oversees two companies that leased space on the tower, estimated the structure collapsed at approximately 11:58 p.m., Monday, Oct. 30.

Limkeman is the owner/president of Logonix and the president of the nonprofit HOPE Broadcasting, both of which utilized the tower.

Verizon network engineer Gary Brandt said he received a call shortly after midnight reporting an unauthorized door intrusion at the company’s small on-site control room, which he said was probably caused by the impact of the collapsing tower.

Verizon leased space on the tower for cell phone coverage.

K100 and Arch Paging also used the tower.

Bridgeway owns the structure and utilizes it for radio service and for operating the McDonough County Public Transportation’s radio service.

K100 was temporarily off the air until approximately midnight Tuesday, when the station began broadcasting via a temporary transmitter located on top of their broadcast building. Consequently, the signal is not quite as powerful as before.

“From here to Good Hope and past Colchester, we’ve got a really strong signal,” said Prairie Radio Communications general manager Jamie Friend. “Considering we lost a 500-foot tower, and ... our antenna was around the 470-foot mark, and we’re broadcasting from about 30 feet right now, I’d say we’re quite happy with where we’re at.”

As soon as Bridgeway’s tower is rebuilt, K100 will resume broadcasting from that location.

HOPE Broadcasting’s WGCA 89.7 FM translator and WDLM 90.5 FM translator were still off the air at press time.

The collapse also cut service to approximately 25 percent of Logonix’s wireless Internet customers.

Limkeman began working early Tuesday morning to restore service.

Luckily, most of the company’s broadcast equipment survived the fall with “minimal damage,” Limkeman said.

“Our main link microwave antenna, we actually took out to the autobody shop and they tapped the dents out of it for us and got it back into line,” he added. “It came up fine.”

Logonix remounted broadcast equipment on an 80-foot tower Bridgeway owns. On Wednesday morning, Limkeman estimated that 85 percent of affected customers would have Internet access restored by early afternoon.

“Just looking at preliminary data and doing some interpolation, looks like maybe 15 percent of the people we can’t immediately get back up,” he said. “We’ve already got contingencies for that. It’ll just take us an extra couple days.”

Bridgeway utilized Logonix’s wireless Internet service for all 47 corporate offices, so when the tower crashed, so did much of the organization’s communication capabilities.

That sent Bridgeway’s information services team scrambling. Starnes praised their “heroic effort” in working all night to get the server operating again.

The affect on Verizon’s cellular coverage is minimal, Brandt said, because the company utilizes three area towers for cell phone coverage.

When the tower fell, part of it landed on some equipment owned by Laverdiere Construction Inc. The extent of the damage was not immediately apparent.

Laverdiere Construction is rebuilding Bridgeway’s recycling center, which was destroyed by fire this summer.

Starnes seemed to take his organization’s latest setback with a bit of good humor.

“It just seems like we’re having excitement all year long at Bridgeway,” he said.