THE SOUTHLAND FIRESTORM : Radio Station Crippled by Fire to Return to Airwaves

KNJO radio expects to return to the air this afternoon after being silenced three days ago by the fire that consumed Rasnow Peak and the station’s vital transmission equipment.

The Westlake Village-based station bills itself as the voice of the Conejo Valley. But it hasn’t been able to report on the biggest news in town--the fire that put it temporarily out of business Tuesday.

With some industry cooperation and temporarily rented equipment, the station will be back on the air, said Program Director Mark Wheeler. Broadcasting at 92.7 FM, KNJO has a soft-rock format that is interspersed with local news and community chatter.

KNJO was broadcasting coverage of the fire Tuesday when flames overtook the peak near Thousand Oaks where its antenna and other equipment were housed.

Wheeler said it marked the second time a fire has proven disastrous for the station. Five or six years ago, he said, the station’s studios were destroyed in a shopping center blaze.

Ventura County Cablevision, which also sustained damage to its multimillion-dollar communications equipment atop Rasnow Peak, had its service restored late Tuesday. Then it began helping KNJO get back in business, said Dan Deutsch, Cablevision vice president

The cable company, which lost 14 of about 35 channels, took calls from dozens of its 86,000 subscribers when they lost a portion of their service, Deutsch said.

“But the customers were very understanding,” he said. “We even had a couple of people who called to say they were praying for us.” He added that one of the stations lost was religious-based Trinity Broadcasting Network.

No other cable companies in the county reported fire-related problems. Comcast in Simi Valley said five or six customers lost service temporarily because of wind, but reported no other interruptions.

Cellular One in Camarillo, the county’s largest cellular phone company, reported no problems with any of its mountaintop transmitters. The company anticipated additional use of cellular phones by emergency agencies and added 20 voice channels in the Thousand Oaks, Santa Paula and Ojai areas.

“We are not telling people not to use their cellular phones,” company spokeswoman Sylvia Schnopp said. “We know that there’s additional (phone) traffic here. If somebody gets a fast busy signal, we just tell them to be patient.”

Customer representative Mike Malotte said the additional channels seem to be enough to handle the increased number of calls due to the fire emergency. Cellular One donated 45 phones for use by the emergency workers during the crisis, officials said.