Hurricane Ian is building strength along the coast of Florida and has its turbulent sights set on probable landfall in the Tampa area.
John Mamola is the program director and brand manager at WDAE and WFLA in Tampa. CNN has reported the storm has shown an unprecedented rate of strengthening from a tropical storm to a powerful hurricane, with some calling it the ‘storm of a lifetime.’
“The storm surge is the real concern,” Mamola said. “Anyone living near the coast should get the hell out.”
Mamola is busy preparing his stations for their kick-into full storm coverage Wednesday morning, including the sports-talker WDAE.
“This is the first major hurricane of this strength to hit our area directly in 100 years,” Mamola said. “Typically the west coast doesn’t get direct hits like this. I don’t think Irma was near the strength this one is going to be. They’re predicting a category four or more.”
It’s a slow-moving system and is being fed by the Gulf water, which is extremely warm right now. A slower storm means more time in the area delivering potential catastrophic flooding.
Mamola first came to Tampa from Chicago in 2011 and figured some of his jobs would be dealing with storm coverage.
“I couldn’t have imagined the magnitude of the storm we have coming our way,” he said. “In our immediate area, we have three professional sports teams, a Division 1 college team, and a lot of things on the line.”
Mamola said for his employees, it will be all hands-on deck for Tuesday, which he expects to be relatively normal with updates on the path of the storm as part of the content. But starting at 6 a.m. on Wednesday morning, WDAE will begin a full simulcast of WFLA, which will be in Operation Stormwatch coverage beginning at 10 a.m. on Tuesday.
“Every year we put together a solid hurricane plan and that will be implemented wherever an iHeart affiliate is impacted locally,” Mamola said. “We have some dyed-in-the-wool experts who will take over live programming for a couple of days. This is not our first rodeo. We’ve dealt with tropical storms and provided assistance and coverage for sister stations in Alabama among other locations.”
The past few days have been full of meetings, going over potential plans. If the stations are damaged, the teams have backup broadcasting bunkers available on higher ground from which they can program fully.
“The studio is in a flood zone in South Tampa,” Mamola said. “We have two backup studios from where we can do live programming. If things flood here, then we’ll go to the bunker.”
Local listeners, many of which have been life-long listeners to Mamola’s stations, are life-long Florida residents. Many have been through similar situations before and what the stations provide will be familiar territory.
“Tomorrow we’ll be inserting a lot of updates throughout the programming day,” Mamola explained. “We will certainly see a lot of sandbags, closings, evacuation zones. We’ll be sure to get that information out to our listeners first. This all is a priority to baseball, football, and hockey. I live about an hour north of the station and I prepared with canned food, water, and did some laundry. Once I’m at the studios, I’m part of the hurricane team. I’m in Odessa, Florida, about 35 minutes off the coast. If we get flooded out here, you know it’s a big, big storm.”
The consensus among locals is this one is not the same as other storm threats they’ve dealt with. Mamola says they know this is different.
“I’ll be manning phones today, handling social media for the stations,” Mamola said. “I’ve done tropical storm coverage. I have experience communicating in that kind of setting, keeping people calm. We’ll also let listeners know we’re seeking information from them as well so we can relay that information. We will ask them where they’re at, what they are experiencing. We’ll always try to double check that information with local authorities and be an informative and calming voice for our listeners who depend on information in times like these.”
Early indicators predict anywhere from St. Petersburg north can expect 7-10 inches of storm surge on top of the rain. That’s a good two to three feet of water. If that prediction comes true, it’s going to do a lot of damage closer to the coast.
“Our studios are just north of McDill Air Force Base, which is already in a low- lying flood area,” Mamola said. “Our studios will probably get hit hard. We’ll have sandbags around the circumference of the buildings. We know what we have to do, and we have a lot of good people here willing to do the work.”
Mamola said they have a tiered broadcasting system and not every station will go into full storm coverage at the same time.
“We will eventually go into full simulcast with every iHeart station in the area,” he explained. “When we get to the brunt of the problems, every iHeart station will be WFLA centralized.”
With the Tampa Bay Buccaneers scheduled to play the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday Night football this week, there may already be some planned changes in the works.
“The Buccaneers are moving practices to Miami for today, tomorrow and Friday,” Mamola said. “They could very well move the game to Monday night if they have to. Raymond James Stadium is a little bit east of the airport. Not necessarily in a flood zone. They may need the stadium post-storm, depending on what takes precedence. We are hopeful that won’t be necessary.”
Mamola said the Rays are in Cleveland. WDAE is the flagship for the team, but tonight, tomorrow and Friday, the Rays will run their own broadcasts out of Cleveland. The Lighting has canceled their pre-season games this week.
Mamola said the only thing he could foresee that would interrupt their coverage is if their broadcasting tower was knocked over.
“That’s my only real concern regarding broadcasting,” he said. “Which is why we have the bunker set up. If we lose power in the main building, which we might, we have generators all over the place which will keep us on the air. If the tower or bunkers get into trouble, then we’ll be in trouble.”
What is rattling Mamola perhaps the worst is the probable loss of power to the region.
“The minute this area loses power, we’ll be faced with the after-storm heat and humidity, with no air conditioning,” he said. “This will be a big problem for retirees. I’m afraid some people are going to die. But we will be helping. I look at it this way; every second we can stay on the air we’ll be able to help people.”