Fire destroys Grand Junction TV studios

Ellen Miller, Special to the Rocky

Published January 20, 2008 at 6:10 p.m.
Updated January 20, 2008 at 6:10 p.m.

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Gretel Daugherty © Grand Junction Daily Sentinel

Flames shoot out of one window and smoke billows out of another as Grand Junction firefighters pull a hose closer to fight the fire at KREX-TV Sunday. The fire broke out around 8:45 a.m. at the television station, and took several hours to control. The cause of the fire had not been determined. Damage was estimated at $6 million.

GRAND JUNCTION — A raging fire Sunday morning destroyed the building housing the TV studios of KREX-TV and KFQX-TV, knocking CBS and Fox signals off the air.

Four employees and a cleaning worker escaped without injury after someone rang the entry buzzer and pounded on the front door to alert them to the fire about 8:30 a.m.

Station executives provided coverage of Sunday's AFC and NFC championship games and other network programming through Bresnan's cable service and were also working with satellite providers also.

The cause of the fire had not been determined. Damage was estimated at $6 million.

Grand Junction Fire Department spokesman Mike Page said the ferocity of the fire, coupled with the honeycombed structure below the first-floor administration and sales offices, prevented firefighters from entering the building.

"It's a death trap," he said. "The building has lots of concealed spaces, and when we tried our initial attack, a couple of smoke explosions forced us back."

KREX, the CBS affiliate, is owned by Hoak Media Corp. of Dallas, and operates KFQX, a Fox affiliate, for Parker Broadcasting. Communities served by the stations include Grand Junction, Delta, Montrose, Glenwood Springs and Aspen.

Most of the equipment, broadcast logs, video library and business records were lost, general manager Ron Tillery said. But the station's transmitters, housed in a part of the basement originally built as a bomb shelter, may survive.

"It's a historic building. Our hearts are broken, but we will continue to provide service and we will be building a new station from the ground up," he said.

KREX began as one of the Western Slope's first radio stations, signed on by the late broadcast pioneer Rex Howell in the early 1930s. The original portion of the building was an old farmhouse acquired by Howell, whose 99-year-old widow still lives across the street.

In the early 1950s, Howell built western Colorado's first television station and expanded the small farmhouse by adding administrative offices to the first floor and expanding the basement to include a studio, newsroom and engineering workshop.

The radio stations, an AM and FM, were sold in the 1980s.

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