January 4, 2007
Doerun -- Work is now underway on a new television tower for WALB-TV. It was six months ago that an Army Chinook Helicopter crashed into one of two TV towers in Doerun.
Four soldiers were killed. And as a result of the crash, both television towers were brought down. The Army has concluded its investigation into the crash, but still won't release its contents.
When we spoke with Special Ops. officials at Ft. Bragg said the families of the soldiers who were aboard the Chinook helicopter that went down June first have been briefed about the collision that took their lives.
Now, new life started on that same site with the foundation should give birth to a new tower in four months.
A few strokes of the hammer and the center point for what will be WALB and WFLX's new television Mega-tower is marked with a pink flag.
The foundation will be poured over the next three weeks. "The actual concrete is right here, it's kind of in that square, it will be a big square about ten by ten and the actual pad's 18 by 18 and you won't see it, you'll only see this 10 foot of pad, this little bit of pad sticking up," said Tower Foundations Superintendent Frank Gomez.
Six new anchors will hold the single, T-shaped tower in place. "It's caisson on the outside which is about a five foot diameter hole by almost 40 feet deep, with rebar and a new anchor, and the center is just basically a pad footing with rebar that the actual tower sits on," Gomez said.
The foundation will take nearly two months to construct and cure, then the tower will slowly creep into the sky. "They will truck in the steel for the tower," said WALB Chief Engineer Bill Williams. "It's already prefabricated into 20 foot sections, they will then begin to stack the sections, up each other and build the tower out to the full height."
The new tower will be the same height, one thousand feet, but two more antennas will be added to make it complete. "The one tower will actually have four antennas on it, a regular analog for both channel 10 and channel 31 and high definition antenna for both," said Williams.
The high definition antenna was about to go up on the WALB's tower in June when the crash occurred. Damage to air conditioning units and the roofs of both transmission buildings had to be replaced before construction on the new tower could begin.
- Past News 10 Video of the tower story
State-of-the-art tower will replace two
Doerun will again host giant TV tower
WALB tower is in the future
Big 10's footprint is smaller
Tower removal could take a while
Towers were Doerun's claim to fame
Picking up the pieces
WFXL tower takes WALB stick with it
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