No sooner had the ink dried on last week's column regarding the rebuilding of KFI's (640 AM) main transmitter tower when the entire tower fell again.

Luckily, no one was seriously injured, though it could have been tragic - the construction crew was busy assembling it at the time of the collapse. One worker was injured slightly, but most of the damage was to the tower itself - it was destroyed - and a warehouse roof.

It's being called a single-point failure by at least one witness. This means that one single point of the construction appears to have been the weak link, so to speak.

In this case, it appears to have been a turnbuckle used in securely tightening the guy wires that help support the tower. When the threads pulled apart, the tension shifted toward the other guy wires and the tower simply snapped over and fell. Structural engineers are looking into the failure.

The collapse leaves KFI without a main tower again, as a new one must be built and shipped out of the factory and the crews must begin assembling it again. This won't happen until investigators determine exactly what caused the failure.

Meanwhile, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association is asking the Federal Aviation Administration, once again, to declare the tower location a hazard and force its relocation away from the area of the Fullerton Airport.

Until the reconstruction begins, KFI is back on its backup transmitter at the same site, with a power

Quick takes

Bonneville, which once owned KBIG (104.3 FM) and later KZLA (now KMVN, 93.9 FM) before selling all local radio properties a few years back, is returning to Los Angeles, having purchased V-100 (KRBV, 100.3 FM) from Radio One. Rumors have the station moving to a talk or country format. I'm betting neither. Details as they arrive ... and the Department of Justice has approved the merger of satellite radio services XM and Sirius. The Federal Communications Commission still must rule, but approval is expected soon.

Richard Wagoner is a freelance writer based in San Pedro. Send questions to him via e-mail at rwagoner@cox.net.