Homer & Cortland Fire Respond to Smoke Condition in Homer – X101 WXHC-FM Radio Temporarily Off-Air

Update March 18th, 2:40pm: WXHC-FM is back On-Air. We thank all of our listeners for your patience as we worked to safely resolve this mornings issue.

Original Post:

Around 9:45 in the morning, a widespread power outage occurred in the Village of Homer and surrounding area. National Grid noted the cause of the outage was due to a tree branch taking out a power line. Due to the outage, an electrical issue led to a surge in power at our radio station, X101 Always Classic 101.5 FM. The surge led to the failure of two batteries and a smoke condition in the building.

An employee with X101 immediately called 9-1-1 while power was shut off to the entire office. This shut off also brought X101 Always Classic Off-Air. Homer Fire arrived minutes after the time of call. Due to the smoke condition in the building, a second alarm, all-hands fire was dispatched to bring in additional resources as an abundance of caution.

Firefighters evacuated the building and confirmed a smoke condition on the third floor in the office of X101. No fire was found. The City of Cortland Fire Department provided mutual aid and arrived with their ladder truck as a precaution.

The building was ventilated and power remained off in the affected area. Units were cleared from the scene around 11am.

X101 would like to personally thank all the first responders from Homer, Cortland, and Homer Police for their immediate response to the scene.

X101 Always Classic does not have a current ETA on when we will be back on-air. We are working diligently to safely restore power in our office at this time. We appreciate your patience with us as we work to move forward.