I had one of those moments this afternoon when I asked, “What are we even doing here?!” I’m afraid our nice stretch of “easy living” came to an abrupt halt today.
I drove up to the transmitter site this afternoon to investigate a problem on the AM and our part time guard met me on the road before I got all the way up there. He had lost my and Peter’s phone numbers and was sure eager to tell me something. His Spanish isn’t as easy to understand as Romel’s. Even so, I knew there was a problem, so we drove on up the rest of the way together.
Entry Point
First, he took me around to the back side of the compound where the razor wire was hanging down the wall. Someone got up there and cut it, which is pretty hard to do. Juan said he discovered it when he walked his circuit Thursday morning but didn’t know how to reach us. He had not tried climbing over the wall to investigate, so neither of us knew what we would find inside. I still figured everything was OK inside. The FM was on the air and sounded good. The AM was off but I was assuming a simple malfunction. When I unlocked the titanium padlock on the gates, I saw our catastrophe.
Demolished door
Whoever got over the wall had a sledge hammer or something. They just demolished our heavy duty security door on the transmitter building and it was standing open with parts laying on the ground. Juan was not around when it happened. We assume it was Wednesday night. Juan had been working full time for the cell company that owns the towers across the road but, since they haven’t paid him in three months, he wasn’t working there anymore. That meant he had to come from his house several times a day or night to our transmitter site to check on things. The guard who actually was across the road said he did not hear anything. That’s impossible unless he’s deaf. Someone beat on that door very hard for a very long time to inflict that damage.
Fixing razor wire bare handed. Yikes!
Inside, the place was pretty much ransacked. The first thing I saw was a big box on the floor that was supposed to have extra antenna cable in it. It was empty. My nice complete set of screwdrivers was gone. The video monitor for the AM computer had been shoved way out of place and all the cables were tangled up, but everything was still there for that system. The only things wrong were that the monitor only displayed one color and there was no audio from the computer or the control console. I didn’t know yet which was the problem. I had called Peter and when he arrived, he investigated that while I patched the breach in the razor wire. Not fun when you don’t have gloves with you! Peter found that the power cord to the control console was partly unplugged, so that got the AM back on the air. We’ll figure out the monitor later.
Gotta get a new door ASAP!
Then we started making short term plans. We got the door so it would close most of the way and not swing in the breeze. Juan said he would sleep there inside the compound tonight. Peter and I stopped on the way home and ordered 210 feet of 5/8″ rebar. I’ll use that to make the heaviest duty screen doors you ever saw for both buildings there. We’ll have to see if we can order a new security door tomorrow or Monday. Then we need to brainstorm ways to make the place even harder to get into.
All in all, even though this is a huge hit to the radio station finances and intensely discouraging for a while, I’m curious about one thing. Once they were in, they had all night to throw stuff over the wall with no one to stop them. So why did they leave? Clearly that was a God thing, but what did He do? Something else to try to remember to ask Him when I get to heaven. In the meantime, I’ll be doing lots of measuring, drilling, cutting, welding, painting and stuff like that. Peter said he can help much of the time, so that will definitely speed things up.
