Radio Station KABE, which was located in Westwego, Louisiana, had its transmitter building located on the river side of the Mississippi river levee. In order to obtain a good ground system, it was decided (not by ME, I can assure you!!) to place the transmission tower right next to the river, I mean; what could be better! Lots of water to keep the ground resistance low. A perfect setting. Well, almost.

In the weeks before the station was to sign on for the first day on the air, the Mississippi river had been steadily rising as it does every spring. Soon the entire ground system was under water. This was expected, and had been accounted for in the design of the antenna system. In fact, the building and the base of the tower itself were raised some 12 feet above the ground to prevent flooding the building and shorting out the tower base insulator. What was NOT accounted for, was that, with the river overrunning its banks, barge traffic would have a difficult time navigating the curve in the Mississippi river right where the tower was located.

Sure enough, old Murphy struck again. On the very morning that KABE was to hit the air for its inaugural broadcast, 30 minutes before air time, a runaway barge on the river came over the now flooded batture and ran over the outer tower guy anchor point. The guy lines, being designed to withstand a hurricane, did not fail even under the onslaught of the ponderous barge. Instead, the guy lines wrapped the tower sections up into a pretzel-like state, pulling the twisted remains beneath the brown river waters. Needless to say, KABE did not go on the air that day.

So the answer is: KABE was the only US radio station ever to have had its broadcast tower demolished by a river vessel.

I obtained ownership of the twisted remains and carted it away. I managed to cut the tower up in sections and weld enough back together to make a 70 foot tower, which I had raised into place with a crane. It was strong, since it was of a solid leg construction, rather than tubular leg design. After moving the guy line anchor points so that the same thing would not happen again, KABE installed a new tower, and finally went on the air, some 15 days after the accident.

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