KH5XIM move out details : Houston Indymedia

Here's the details of the pullout of KH5XIM, low power 95.3 FM from Media lot 12 in Dome City, TX

On Thursday, Sept. 15, I got to the trailer and after straightening up, making a few annoucements, station ID, etc., I loaded a CD with a lot of interviews and other stuff that would run about an hour, locked up and left.

I went over to the media center in the Reliant, to get the daily update. In the update, it was announced that media lot 12 was possibly going to be moved to media lot 13. The notice said a decision would be announced at the 3 pm briefing. This caused some concern because we would have to go off the air, get it taken apart and reassembled in the new lot. I decided to ask the JIC for assistance, since we were so small. We took up one parking space.

The officials at the Dome were very considerate and cooperative as far as us remaining on the air in the media lot. I was directed to Don Wolf of the JIC. He spoke with me and told me that, because of moving the Dome & Reliant populations into the Arena, the media lot 12, in which we were set up, was going to be closed to get back to using it as a parking lot.

I explained our situation, he examined our set up and said he could see no reason why we couldn't stay where we were as long as power was running to the lot, and afterwards by generator as long as the lot wasn't needed. I told him we wanted to broadcast through Sunday, and he said fine. (Their plans changed on Saturday.) The JIC was actually very accomodating, and after looking at our set up, we got permission to stay where we were, even though the other media all moved over to the other lot. The reason we were asked to leave was to clear the lot, not to get thrown off the air.

In fact, we could have moved yesterday, and set up in the media lot, but our volunteer resources had been stretched pretty thin, things are really emptying out as far as area evacuee population, our few remaining listeners were leaving, so Tish and I made the decision to break it down instead of moving and setting up again for possibly only another day or two.

We had plenty of notice that the power would be disconnected, we just weren't sure when. We knew we would probably have until the next morning. When I arrived at the site on Saturday, the power was off, and the decision was made to move out. We can still cover the stories there, because we still have media access, we are just no longer broadcasting, due to OUR choice not to move into the media lot.

I would really like to appreciate the JIC's efforts to allow us to stay on the air in our original location, far longer than we thought considering the moving of the media lot. That allowed us to remain on the air uninterupted. We also had power for a much longer time than we thought we would, we never had to turn on the generator once.

The choice not to move into the other media lot was OURS, not the JIC or Reliant folks. The power went off for everyone left, including the luxury RV next to us.I want to acknowledge that while we were there, "they" generally treated us with courtesy and cooperation. The threat to "impound" was if the trailer wasn't moved out by 6. The network that the RV belonged to, had the same "threat". It was time to go, that's all. They didn't throw us out, they welcomed us at the other media lot, we chose not to go there. We still had all our media credentials, and knew we could still cover the location.

Although I won the trailer on eBay, I have not yet paid for it. The current owner expressed concerns for the security of the trailer, if was to have been operating humanless for any long period of time, like overnight. It would be very easy to just drive up, hook up and take off with it. Not having live programers also hindered fresh content because many people who run the programming do the help announcements, put it on auromatic pilot with something long, and then go out and get interviews while the long piece is playing, Since we had doubts about our ability to staff it 24/7, because folks had already taken off work and had other obligations like school, etc. we decided it was best to pull the trailer.

In regards to the power situation. It was by the JIC's generosity in considering our specific situation that we didn't have to run the generator or go off the air. We were tapped into the power that was SBC's robot truck and AP. AP got their last client at 9pm on Friday. They informed us that they would break down after than and pull out by midnight. We knew we would probably be off the air in the morning.

They have, in reality, afforded us more consideration than "the big guys." I had a face to face with a FEMA guy and a JIC woman who specifically came out to check us out...because the JIC woman had heard the program Jim Ellinger and I did on the HIMC program last week on KPFT, and she agreed with many of our points. I plan to put up a page on my site about this week, that conversation will be included.

In general, once we were on the lot and building the station, "they" treated us well. They respected our efforts and
intentions; and in the parking lot move instance, afforded us more consideration than "the big boys" got. It was our choice to close down the operation at the Dome City site.

It was an awesome experience. I am so proud to have been a part of KAMP and evacuation radio services. I am also so grateful to all those who I know gave so much to make it happen. Don't hate the media..be the media.

Lorie Kramer
HIMC - KAMP - ers