JACKSON - On Aug. 29, 2005, when Bay St. Louis-Waveland became ground zero for the fury and wave surge of Katrina, one tiny radio station, WQRZ-LP, a non-profit, low-power FM station, became ravaged Hancock County's sole communication link to the outside world.
Because Brice Phillips, WQRZ's chief engineer, general manager and chief bottle-washer, remained on the air without sleep during and after the storm, he saved an untold number of lives.
That's what Brian "Hooty" Adam, director of Hancock County's emergency operations center, has to say about what WQRZ and Brice Phillips did throughout the nation's worst disaster.
All but four of 90 radio stations from the Mobile to New Orleans had gone silent, but little WQRZ, with his home-built tower, remarkably remained on the air. And only WQRZ was focused on the needs in the smashed communities of Bay St. Louis, Waveland and Diamond Head.
What Phillips and his gutsy little radio station did two years ago that made such a tremendous difference between life and death has rightly been recognized nationally.
Last year, the Small Business Administration gave Phillips its Phoenix Award and $16,000 as the most outstanding business recovery of 2005. Then, two weeks ago, National Pubic Broadcasting's Bill Moyers featured Phillips and WQRZ-LP on "Bill Moyers Journal," telling his heroic Katrina story to a national audience.
Moyers, who has campaigned for several years against corporate concentration of news media outlets, cited WQRZ-LP at Bay St. Louis as a perfect example of how small community broadcast media are vital to the nation's democracy.
"That's what this station is designed to do, was to be 24/7 and we were going to build it where it was survivable in any natural disaster," Phillips had told the "Journal's" Rick Karr on the Moyers program.
Phillips explained to me on the phone what he meant: before the storm he had built a transmitter shack and a 100-foot tower separate from his house, and put his studio in a bedroom.
The shack and radio tower survived the storm, but the house was uprooted and floated several feet away by the torrent of water that poured in.
After the eye-wall of Katrina had passed, Phillips figured it was best to move his transmitter over to a little bit higher ground at the county's emergency operations center (EOC), not far away, and was thrown briefly off the air. At the EOC, he found Hooty Adam and several staffers with no phones or other means of getting out evacuation orders. His radio broadcast became the only way to transmit emergency instructions to the public.
"He probably saved as many people after the storm as he did before the storm because of being able to tell them where to get food, water and ice," said Hooty Adam.
How did people know WQRZ was on the air? In this one instance, FEMA helped immensely. The agency obtained 3500 AM/FM radios and gave them out with food, water and ice.
Mind you, Brice Phillips' sole source of income is a $500 per month Social Security disability check. He had moved to Hancock County in the latter 1980s. A ham radio fanatic since a kid, Phillips, now 41, won one of the few low-power FM radio permits created by the Federal Communications Commission in 2001. With his own money he built the transmitter and tower and got WQRZ-LP on the air in 2002.
To show how dedicated he is to community radio, when Phillips received the $16,000 check from the SBA last year, he didn't put it in his pocket. He gave it to the non-profit corporation which is WQRZ's operating entity.
Just a couple of weeks after Katrina, Hurricane Rita blew in, with more water. Going back and forth to check on his radio station tower, Phillips got drenched and chilled. He came down with pneumonia.
Thanks to the help of a volunteer, radio engineering consultant Sara Allen, who had come down to help upgrade WQRZ's signal a week after Katrina, Phillips' little station was able to keep operating. The FCC let WQRZ crank up its power from 100 watts to nearly 2000, expanding its reach to 30 miles. Nine months after Katrina, it was still Hancock County's only broadcaster.
Moyers has relentlessly sounded the warning of big media companies gobbling up small, local stations under the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and stripping them of community presence. He has zeroed in on ClearChannel, which within three years after the law amassed 1,200 stations.
Right now, Phillips says he's pushing to get a full-powered station, up to 25,000 watts, and reach a wider audience. But still non-profit.
