FCC Headquarters Closed for Water Damage

The FCC said Monday (Oct. 15) its Washington headquarters would be closed for the day because of water damage due to a fire.

That came in a two-line notice on the FCC website.

"Sprinklers were activated to put out a small fire on the west side of the 5th floor," according to an internal FCC e-mail, "and the water caused localized damage on that floor as well as several floors below where the sprinklers went off. The closure will allow remediation teams and relevant staff to ensure that the facility is fully functional before staff returns."

No word on when it would be back open, but a source said not long and everyone would be teleworking Monday.

It also came out the same day that the FCC updated its station outage totals from Hurricane Michael. There are only three TV stations out of service, down from four the day before; 13 FM radio stations out of service, down from 14 the day before, and 3 AM radio stations out of commission, which was no change.

Florida still had 205,643 customers without cable or wireline service, with 15,953 out of service in Alabama and 69,704 in Georgia.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.