Like many city employees and elected officials, staff working for the Sun Prairie Media Center were close to the explosion that shook downtown Sun Prairie on Tuesday, July 10. As usual, Marc Borland, staff producer/director, was at City Hall directing and live broadcasting a city meeting. "The plan commission meeting had not yet started," remembered Borland, "and then the explosion happened. My immediate thought was that something had hit the building. That's how immediate and severe the impact was. Then, since the meeting hadn't started, I ran down the street along with [The Star editor] Chris Mertes to see what was going on and take a picture."
That picture was then texted to SPMC Director Jeff Robbins. Robbins said, "I was in Monona at the time at my daughter's swim practice. It was hard to tell from the picture how severe the explosion was and I couldn't abandon my daughter. But I started seeing more messages and getting more reports and it became clear that this was a pretty major situation.
Once we left the practice and got on Stoughton Road, I could see the smoke billowing in the air. Then I got in touch with a few people, from [Economic Development Director] Neil Stechschulte to [SPMC Production Manager] Lisa Wolf to [local radio producer] Bill Baker. We decided that the least we could do was get on 103.5 FM [the city-run low-power FM station] and pass along whatever information we could and advise people to stay away from the area."
After a couple of hours on the air passing along whatever information was coming in, Baker and Robbins got up early the next morning and set up a live radio broadcast at Sun Prairie High School where the American Red Cross was serving evacuated families. From there Sun Prairie Media Center's low-power FM station promoted the many community fundraisers that were being held and carried emergency-related press conferences live, all the while updating the Cable TV station's crawls with the latest.
(Pictured at right) Sun Prairie Media Center broadcast many live radio remotes at disaster relief fundraisers, this one at the Nitty Gritty, a Sun Prairie restaurant, which donated 50% of its sales that day. Mark Gonwa, community radio volunteer producer (right) poses with a guest wearing a red Sun Prairie Strong t-shirt.
