
photo by Jason Squire
KPTZ has always been committed to being a key resource when a disaster strikes our area. Located close to the Red Cross, police, and food bank, our studio is in an ideal place if and when our community is faced with an emergency. We have been working with the Jefferson County Emergency operations center, KROH and consultant Rita Kepner to make sure we are ready when needed. The experience from areas hit by emergencies has been that radio is one of the best resources, sometimes the only resource. Our role will be to provide accurate and timely information that can be valuable to everyone in the listening area for as long as necessary. We are linked in to the emergency networks and will get information directly from the emergency command centers.
We are in the process of making sure we can stay on the air even if it means broadcasting directly from our transmitter. The key, however, will be to make sure all our volunteers are trained and available. We have had a couple of trial runs of our system and we’re using the results to improve our documentation and training. Our volunteers would first make sure they and their families are safe and then we hope that enough of them would be available to get to the station. Let’s hope it’s not needed but if it is we want to make sure we’re ready to help.
KPTZ Community Radio. More than music.