Radio flyers respond with fire reports

By Saria Kraft Acorn Staff Writer

RADIO FLYERS - Jim Rondeau, KCLU director of operations and programming (left) and Lance Orozco, KCLU news director (right) delivered nonstop news of the Moorpark, Simi Valley, Fillmore and Piru fires. The FM men are based at Cal Lutheran University.

When Moorpark officials set up an emergency operations center at city hall Sunday morning, they were down a crucial media outlet. Government Channel 10 suffered equipment damage soon after wildfire erupted in Walnut Canyon on Saturday. The city was off the air.

Although power and cable outages were rampant throughout the area, Adelphia Cable managed to establish interim use of channel 25 by Monday afternoon. The city’s regular cable access channel was back in business Tuesday.

KCLU 88.3 FM, the National Public Radio affiliate based at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, was about to conclude its membership drive Saturday afternoon when power outages forced it off the air. When the station resumed, scheduled programming was interrupted with fire reports from 6 to 10 p.m.

The university outlet, which broadcasts jazz and NPR programs that reach from Calabasas to Santa Barbara (102.3 FM), stopped the music Sunday. There would be no Blue Note and no Verve. By 9 a.m., it was all fire all the time.

"Jim (Rondeau) delivered continuous coverage in a cogent, logical style from bell to bell," said Mary Olson, KCLU general manager.

Rondeau, program director and operations manager for the station, talked nonstop from 8 a.m. to 8:15 p.m. The anchor received field reports from KCLU news director Lance Orozco and science and technology reporter Brian Webb. The trio resumed the task Monday, breaking only for NPR national news feeds.

Olson jumped in as executive producer, lining up agency, fire and health officials. With government and medical offices closed for the weekend, locating experts was no easy assignment.

KCLU took nearly 500 calls on Sunday alone, Olson said. "We are blessed with an intelligent, articulate audience. There were no histrionics," she said.

The station referred Moorpark and Simi Valley residents to livestock rescue sources, animal control centers and Red Cross shelters. By Tuesday, KCLU received nearly as many thank-you notes as it had calls for help. The e-mail screen on Olson’s computer was filled with messages of appreciation.

"We want people to know that in time of crisis, they can depend on us," she said. "I am really proud of what we did."