Transformer explosion causes fire and smoke at TV station Fire & Arson 07/26/2025 05:44 PM (PDT) Near Olson Mem Hwy, Golden Valley, MN 55427I was amazed at, on Care 11, the video of that transformer explosion. I was just thinking if somebody had been by that thing when it lit up, that thing really self-destructive, impressive explosion there. Anyways, that's about it, (name withheld). Back to you, K-0, UDF. Real fine, Tom, and what Tom was referring to is my... Colleagues, a couple of clicks up the dial. In Golden Valley, a chair TV had a had a 4008-volt transformer outside of the building explode this past week and knocked their building entirely. It took the power out of their building, and then unfortunately, before the blower fans were killed of power, it meant just like a whole lot of smoky air into their building, so they've been kind of limping along here this week. The other stations all were, you know, saying, hey, what can we do to help? I don't know what all we did behind the scenes, but they're doing better. And with any luck, they'll be, right now, project to be kind of somewhat back to the building normal scene they do by Monday. But in the meantime, they had to put an emergency game plan in place. And I know it's something that we have worked on, and we've got kind of a little guide on it, but hopefully, you know, knock on wood that it never happens to any of us, but also, unfortunately, from their unfortunate situation. It will make a whole lot of us look at our emergency plans to make sure that TV stays on the air. And for what it's worth, I'm going to do a shameless plug here, over the air television. What happened with care is when they lost their master control in Golden Valley, they lost a bunch of their fiber feet out of the building. So things like Comcast was interrupted for a while. YouTube TV was entirely gone from them. Once again, boys and girls, put that damned antenna. up there and receive free over-the-air TV with an antenna. Sorry, I know, I know I'm preaching to the choir, but everybody's streaming and saying, you know, how great it is to get everything in on their fiber optic line on streams, and this is a really good proof that, you know, if the F hits the fan at a broadcaster's place and, you know, like many of God is their RF, it's important to get RF out there, so they're off myself bucks. After Tom, well, the station that got covered in part by Tom, I ended up hearing them say was the word Bravo. So who was the, and I don't think it was you, BEV, but there was a station right after Tom that said the word Bravo. So let's see if I could figure out who that might be. Echo India Bravo. Dan, I'll bet it was you, but I thought I also heard something underneath you. Was there another station there just now? Because now if I'm hearing Bravo and hearing your voice, I'm kind of like, yep, that was it. Go ahead. Good evening. How you do it? Oh, good here, (name withheld). Here's the NW0 EIB. 90 degrees out in the driveway here. South end of Rose Mountain. And yeah, that was interesting. Our chair 11 had that fire. And they showed the inside of the studios all the smoke damage. And it's like, wow. They've changed the setup there since I was last there way back in the 90s, but I suppose that's a long time ago. But it was interesting to see how they set up a temporary feed right next to the Shoreview Towers and did a couple newscasts from there and then, of course, over in Atlanta. But it was really interesting how they were kind of ad hoc and everything right near the twin. Shoreview towers, or the towers that are real close together there. And no makeup on, sunglasses on, and some of the camera folks were teasing on here, staff, like, hey, you look a little different today. Why? Well, because the station was almost not fire. So that was, it was fun to see how all hell broke loose, but they pulled it together. And I got to give them kudos for that one.