KSQD preps for ‘Squid Fest’ having dodged rising floodwaters

A Sunday night at midnight is, obviously, not the best time for an unoccupied office building to be hit with a sudden flash flood — if there is a best time for such a time. Imagine the scene awaiting the first arrivals on Monday morning.

But that’s exactly what happened the night of Jan. 21 at the Santa Cruz County Office of Education’s annex building at 399 Encinal St. in Santa Cruz. Luckily for the folks at the COE, they lease a part of that building to community-funded radio station KSQD (K-Squid), which has its broadcast booth there. That fact pretty much saved the annex building from becoming an accidental water tank.

Howard Feldstein, KSQD’s program director, was at the studio at 11:45 that night. “I was just kind of monitoring things,” he said, “getting all the logs set up for the week. It’s pretty quiet. I’m usually there from about 8 to 10, or so. But [that night] it’s pouring down rain and I was — I don’t know — just working late, I suppose.”

He was just standing up from his desk to greet a volunteer programmer who had just arrived when he noticed water on the floor, water in motion. The rainwater was coming in fast, from somewhere, so Feldstein called 911, and the fire department came out to help.

Coming into the building was a pipe serving as a conduit for fiber-optic cable. Somewhere along the line, there was a breach in the pipe, and as a result water began flowing through the conduit into an adjoining room across the hallway from the KSQD studio. 

“We’re on a hill,” said KSQD board chair Rachel Goodman, “so the drainage pattern points right to the place where the conduit was. So it was a hose coming into the building.”

But before Feldstein could determine the source of the water, he had to act to save some of the radio station’s broadcast equipment, much of which was sitting on the floor. While a programmer was keeping the station on the air throughout the ordeal in the station’s small studio space, Feldstein worked feverishly to salvage KSQD’s electronics. 

“If the radio station wasn’t in the building and nobody had been there,” he said, “no one would have been there for nine hours or so probably, and the whole building would have flooded, because it was just gushing in, and we were an inch deep in no time.”

On Saturday, March 2, KSQD will host “Squid Fest,” to mark the station’s fifth birthday. Whether or not Howard Feldstein will be presented with some kind of golden squid award for his fast acting is yet to be determined. But the event — which features an afternoon-long concert and silent auction — is a fundraiser for the public radio station. The KSQD studio sustained some damage due to the January flood, but, because the COE owns the building, the station is not on the hook for most of it. Still, the station has been without its production room, which had to shut down during flood repairs, and it’s still some weeks away from returning to normal. In the meantime, the station’s programmers and volunteers have had to work around the ongoing repairs.

Last summer, KSQD boosted its signal with an ambitious fundraising campaign to cover all of Santa Cruz County as well as a good part of San Benito and Monterey counties. “Squid Fest” celebrates that new prominence with a concert featuring live performances from Keith Greeninger, Tammi Brown, Lucas Lawson, Poi Rogers, Anthony Arya, Coffee Zombie Collective and others, all to take place at the Resource Center for Nonviolence in Santa Cruz. Music is to start at 12:45 p.m. on March 2. 

“It’s not for the flood damage,” said Goodman of the fundraiser. “It’s more just to support us in our recovery. It’s definitely been a strain and a drain. Most of all, we just want people to come out and not focus on all that stuff. It’ll make us feel happy and boost our spirits to have people come out and enjoy all this great music.”

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