UGFM provided vital service under challenging circumstances

RADIO station UGFM was a lifeline for many people in Murrindindi Shire during the fire emergency, providing essential and timely information to people.

This was particularly important when power, phone and internet connections were interrupted.

Peter Weeks from UGFM said on Thursday, “We basically held up fairly well. We had all our generators kick in but we ran out of fuel at the Yea transmitter.

We couldn’t get in to refuel it and then we got in to refuel it… and we just refueled it again [Thursday]… We’ve got the Telstra site going up here now as well.

We’ve got the mobile phones working in Highlands as well today, so we’ve been dropping generators in everywhere.”

The Yea transmitter is in the fire ground, so they had to get an escort in with the CFA to get in to refuel, and Telstra and the CFA had to get in to get their base station going.

Peter said, “We’re giving them power from our generator to get them back on the air.”

“I think the biggest issues we’ve had is network failures with Telstra and NBN. They’re one of their biggest problems. We’ve worked hard to keep all their systems running as well.”

UGFM had a generator stolen from their Marysville location in early January, but fortunately, Marysville didn’t lose power so people could continue to listen.

During the fires, “We’re broadcasting 24/7 for the first couple of days,” he said. “Then we’ve been able to throttle back a bit.”

“Everything’s being driven out of the Alexandra studios. We’ve had double two crew members on four-hour shifts rotating around,” he said.

They didn’t leave the studio when the fire was next to Alexandra. Peter said, “We decided to stay. We’re in a brick building and it’s in the middle of town. We decided it was safe enough to stay. We considered our options there were if the town was getting to a point…