Monday, February 04, 2013

Australia: Bundaberg broadcasts nine days straight in flood

Studios surrounded by water
Bundaberg’s Hitz939 and 4BU have finally commenced regular programming after nine days simulcasting emergency and flood recovery information to the Wide Bay region.

A rotation of on-air announcers have been broadcasting live 24/7 as the floods peaked and the clean-up effort commenced. As well as on-air updates, the stations utilised social media to update residents, and almost doubled their Facebook likes in the space of a week. Some staff cut off from the studios by road were using the internet to keep Facebook pages up to date.

Station GM Trish Mears says “We had many of our own staff cut off by flood waters and it made sense to use those who were available on rotating shows by combining both stations to add to  our efforts.”

Emergency broadcasts began after a number of tornados swept through the region, followed by a catastrophic 9.5m flood peak for the Burnett River.

Staff continued to broadcast even though the studios were in an evacuation zone, and were prepared to broadcast from a new location if required.


(Source : radioinfo.com.au)

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