Radio World: Shortwave Station Bends But Doesn’t Break
A second tower holding the 44-degree antenna was snapped in the middle.
(Source: Radio World via Richard Langley)
Among the many victims of Hurricane Irma in September was the transmitter/antenna farm of Radio Miami International, WRMI in Okeechobee, located on a cattle ranch 40 miles inland from Port St. Lucie on Florida's Atlantic coast.
On Sunday Sept. 10, Irma's roaring winds tore across the flat plains housing WRMI's 23 antenna systems, comprising a total of 68 towers - the largest commercial shortwave radio transmission site in the United States. The hurricane-force winds snapped one of WRMI's towers in half, leaving the torn metal lattice dangling suspended in the transmission lines. A second tower was bent in half like a paperclip. Many transmission lines radiating from WRMI's central 16,000-square-foot transmitter building to the arrays also were knocked down along with the telephone poles that supported them.
The post-Irma scene looked as if a drunken giant had wandered across the cattle ranch and tripped repeatedly, taking down whatever he had stumbled across.["]