Sometime during the late-night hours Sunday, as hours-long rainfall pounded the Central Coast, water gushed through a telecommunications conduit leading into KSQD radio station, flooding the studio floors and sending the few staffers that were working scrambling to get sensitive electronic equipment off the floor.
But so far, station officials have found no significant damage.
A restoration company was set to assess the scope of the damage on Monday afternoon, said Mathilde Rand, treasurer for Natural Bridges Media, the nonprofit that runs the radio station.
“We stayed on the air,” she said. “Everybody’s helping, that’s the nice thing. It’s a real community.”
Rand says that the staff member discovered the leak at 11:45pm. It is not clear what would have happened if it had occurred during the early-morning hours, during which the station is on automation for roughly five hours, Rand said.
KSQD radio, on the dial at 90.7fm and online at ksqd.org, went on the air in 2018, roughly two years after its predecessor KUSP shut down. The station brought a local public radio station back to Santa Cruz County.
