Althea:
You are listening to News from the Boo, your look at the news inside KBOO. I'm your news director, Althea Billings. On today's episode, I will be speaking with newly-minted Interim News Director, Hana Francis. And later we'll hear from KBOO Station Manager, Nathan Vandiver, about a recent flood and sewage issue we have encountered at the station. So,stay tuned for that. Right now, though, I want to welcome Hana Francis, interim KBOO News Director. Hey, Hana!
Hana: Hello, Althea.
Althea: Thank you for coming on. I'm excited to get our listeners learning a little bit more about you because you are taking over the news department this summer while I am on sabbatical. How are you feeling about that? We've been working on it the past couple weeks.
Hana: We have been. I am so excited. You know, it's just three months, so it'll go by in the blink of an eye. But I'm really excited to be here. I love everyone at KBOO. I love the listeners out there. I mean, the station's incredible, too. I don't know if listeners have been in, but you should check it out if you haven't. And one of these days we'll have bathrooms again, which will be. Wow, that sounds lovely. Which will be huge when we pull that together. Althea, have you told the listeners why you're taking a sabbatical?
Althea: It's a good question. Our union contract -- we're unionized here at KBOO. Shout out CWA 7901. We are unionized, and as a part of our contract, once you've worked at KBOO for more than five years, you are entitled to a three-month unpaid sabbatical. So, that's what I'm doing. I'm taking a benefit of my work here to take the summer off and hopefully get some inspiration flowing through my veins again.
Hana: Do you have one thing that you want to share with listeners that you're going to do in your sabbatical?
Althea: I'm traveling to visit some family and friends. I'm hoping to swim and be in the sun. I'm going to also be traveling around to a lot of our, I guess, sibling community radio stations around the state with Oregon Community Media. So, you may hear me in the next three months occasionally.
Hana: You can't keep Althea off the air.
Althea: Maybe that's part of the problem. But we'll see. We're going to, you know, have a three-month lifestyle change and see what comes of it. But, Hana, let's talk about you because you're in the chair now.
Hana: Yeah, I'm in the hot seat. Watch out.
Althea: The hot seat, the hot chair. What is your experience in radio? Can you give us a little bit of background about where you're coming from when you, before you came to KBOO?
Hana: Yeah, absolutely. I guess I first got into radio through doing social service, which is kind of bizarre. But I was hired by an organization in Eugene called Whitebird Clinic to produce a radio show for them about what the social service workers.
Althea: Whitebird Clinic, people might know from CAHOOTS, right?
Hana: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's one of the departments. They've got 12 departments, which they're actually going through pretty hard times right now. But incredible organization. I interviewed the social service workers about what they do, what like the underlying issues that cause the need for their work, and you know, how people could get involved. And that really moved me to want to get into radio because audio is such an incredible storytelling format.Folks can listen to you in their car with them. And it's like a conversation with someone that you would have never talked to. Yeah, and then I've been doing radio at XRAY for like the last two years. And then started here volunteering a little while ago. And now I'm really excited to be the News Director for a couple months.
Althea: Yeah, Hana and I actually got connected at a journalism-county thing talking about last year's elections in the Portland area and trying to figure out how the heck the new system was going to work and how we were going to be able to talk about it.
Hana: Yeah, it was like a training on how yeah, how to journalists should be covering it because it's so it's so wild with so many different candidates. There's like over 100 candidates for the last election. But I think you did a pretty good job. Althea: I think we pulled it off. There is in fact a new government people voted in the election. So you have a regular show at XRAY.
Hana: Yeah, that's right, doing Monday mornings over there. [I’ve been] helping out on the KBOO newscast for the past. I guess it's almost a year because I think that that happened maybe like I don't know time flies man.
Althea: Well, before we go, this is your little introduction anything you're looking forward to in the news department? Any areas of focus you want to let people know about?
Hana: I'm just I'm excited to learn. I feel like the station is so big and it's been around for like over 50 years, right? So there's just like so many systems that are in place. The type of radio that I've been doing is just really like thrown together. It's just like it started in my room, you know, and then like one room studio station and now there's like a whole building that I can interact with that's just purely dedicated to radio. So I'm just really excited to learn. There's so much that I need to learn. So yeah, yeah, that's awesome. And also the people the people are amazing. I'm so excited to make some new friends.
Althea: There's a lot of fantastic people at KBOO, obviously, a lot of very knowledgeable folks in all sorts of different issue areas. So I've been here five going on six years, I've been learning a ton and continue to. Hana, before we wrap this part News From The Boo up, any final thoughts?
Hana: Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here at KBOO. And I hope you have a great sabbatical. You're going to be missed by everyone, including I'm sure many of the people listening right now.
Althea: Oh, that's sweet. Let's not get sentimental. Because we haven't talked about the flood or the sewage issue. But I want to thank you, Hana for coming on News from the Boo.
Hana: Yeah, thank you.
Althea: That was Hana Francis, our Interim News Director. She will be helming the KBOO News department for the summer. Maybe you should send her some news tips or come volunteer. We'd love to have you! will be back at the news desk in September. I want to shout out our union CWA 7901. And the broader KBOO community for providing me this kind of opportunity. It's really special. I'm going to throw it over now to our station manager, Nathan.
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Althea: I am here with KBOO station manager, Nathan Vandiver. Welcome to News from the Boo.
Nathan: Thanks, Althea. I'm really glad to be here.
Althea: We're here to talk about a challenge that we are facing at the KBOO studio right now to make sure that our volunteers and members are in the loop. Can you give us a brief recap of what we've kind of been dealing with here over the past couple of weeks?
Nathan: Yeah, a couple of weeks ago, we had a heavy rain and that heavy rain drained successfully off of our roof into our roof drain and down into the sewer. But we ended up having a blockage somewhere in our sewer line between the front of our building and where the sewer line meets the sewer itself. For us, our sewer line is on Southeast Ankeny Street because our building, when it was built, there was not a sewer on Southeast 8th Avenue. The reality of it is, is that the city doesn't have to maintain that sewer line that extends from the edge of our building all the way to the main sewer on Southeast Ankeny. So it's on us as the property owner to maintain that sewer line. And it's called a non-conforming line because it doesn't go directly into a sewer on the same street as it's located.
Althea: We did have a little flood. The lobby did flood the other week.
Nathan: Yeah, I get lost in the details.
Althea: There's a lot of details. You've learned a lot of details.
Nathan: Yeah, but that's the background on what, you know, there's a blockage somewhere. It probably has to do with a tree and we're going to get that cleaned out, but we haven't been able to identify it yet other than where it likely is. And part of the problem is that plumbing companies haven't been able to get a clean shot at fixes that they can implement internal to the pipe on the sewer line. And so also once they're able to, it's like they can run a high pressure jet of water in there to break up clogs. And they haven't been able to get the hose in a good enough position with a few enough turns in the hose to be able to have the maximum pressure to break up that clog. So there's a whole lot more, but yeah, basically the water hit that clog and it, yeah, it backed up into the building and it caused a flood. And yeah, the flood affected the front of the building. It affected the bathrooms. It was the deepest in the bathrooms, maybe like a few inches, but it was kind of contained in there so that when it went out of the bathrooms is maybe up to like about an inch deep. Um, but it made a little bit of a river out the front hallway. You were there.
Althea: I was there. I was there.
Nathan: It was interesting. I was really glad it made a river out the front door instead of back toward the studios. That would have been worse.
Althea: We're thankful for that part.
Nathan: We've had some restoration companies out, but we won't be able to get them going until we get at in the process of fixing the problem.
Althea: Is there a timeline that you've been looking at?
Nathan: This is one of the hardest and most frustrating parts of the process. We're waiting for our third quote, as we're recording this, , I expected to have it yesterday and we're following up today to see where it's at, but we have two other quotes, which are good. And we'll move forward today or tomorrow on who to work with to get --the city has some requirements of how we can maintain that non-conforming sewer line. And it's also helpful to the situation that the plumbers have run into where they're not able to break the clog. But the city requires us to replace the plumbing line from our building, out into where it turns in the street, which is about 15 feet, and then install what's called a clean out at that point. And that's a clean out as a spot where a plumber can open a lid and be able to access the sewer line at some point down the line, from your plumbing fixtures. So it just makes it, it'll make it a lot easier for them to get to that clog or any clog that might happen in the future in the sewer line, between our building and the, and the sewer itself. So that's the work that we need to have done first. Hopefully once they get that clean out installed, we'll be able to break the clog and get going. But if not, then we'll have to spot dig in the street, between that point in the sewer. And then, you know, that's something else that we'll have to bid out as well. So right now we're trying to get the initial fix to where our plumbing will be set up in the way that it's required to be set up today so that we can either fix the problem or be set up to try the next thing.
Althea: What do you want to leave our listeners with any final thoughts about, I mean, because Nathan, you came to KBOO as a radio guy and now you've gotten all of this sewer knowledge. Any final words, final thoughts for folks?
Nathan: Yeah. I always feel like, Oh gosh, there's a new career I could go into every time I learned something new. But no, I I'm loving radio and we're going to get this fixed. I want to say a big thanks to our neighbors – Grendel’s Coffee House has been very welcoming, allowing programmers and staff and any volunteers at KBOO to use their restroom during their working hours. And also a big thanks to Jupiter NEXT hotel, which has been allowing us to use their bathroom as well. These are our pretty much direct neighbors and they've been very welcoming and supportive of us dealing with this. And it seems like most folks understand this might take a while. I was also going to say, we've had a few offers of help from folks who might, or offers of the idea of seeking help from the KBOO community. And so if you have plumbing experience and you'd like to help, please let me know. I'd be happy to talk to you. The nature of this is that the city has a list of licensed contractors who can do the specific repairs we need to fix the specific issue that we are having or get to where we can fix that specific issue. So the work has to be done a certain way. And there's a finite number of companies that the city is going to let do it. But if you are a plumber and you think you could help and you're within the KBOO community, please feel free to reach out to me. My email is manager@KBOO.org, or you can call or text me directly at 971-801-1391.
Althea: Awesome. Well, Nathan, thank you so much for stopping by News from the Boo.
Nathan: Thank you. I appreciate it.