Drive-Thru Request Line Fail
• Pardon our usual smart-ass headline to a story that could have turned out tragically… except that it didn’t, thank goodness. By now you probably heard about the pick-up truck that crashed into the Cumulus building in Indianapolis last Thursday evening, heavily damaging the air studio of Country WFMS and landing the driver in the hospital.
Police are investigating the accident that happened last Thursday around 6:30pm, involving a pickup truck that was apparently involved in a crash on I-465 and veered off the roadway, careened down an embankment, and plowed into the Cumulus broadcast complex at 6810 N. Shadeland Avenue that houses Country 95.5 WFMS , Top 40 WZPL, AC WNTR (107.9 The Mix), Classic Hits 104.5 WJJK, Active Rock WNDX (93.9 X) and Sports-Talk WXNT-AM 1430.
In what turned out to be a remarkable stroke of luck, the WFMS broadcast happened to be voice-tracked at the time of the crash; thus, no one was in the studio that was nearly destroyed. And despite the severity of the damage, local media coverage of the incident was sadly inadequate, as WZPL PD Jimmy Steele told “Radio’s Best Friend,” Art Vuolo, “It’s shameful how poor the local media coverage was on local TV news and in the only local paper, The Indianapolis Star.” He added, “If anyone had been anywhere in that studio they would have been killed or seriously injured, and most TV stations covered the story in under 30 seconds.”
RAMP later caught up with Operations Manager OM Christopher “Boomer” Layfield, who reports, “No staff were injured, although a few are rattled by what happened which is understandable. The driver of the vehicle remains hospitalized and we’re all hoping he makes a full recovery.” Layfield added, “We had just finished a total remodel of that studio and we are EXTREMELY lucky that nobody was in there at the time of the crash. It makes me uncomfortable to even think about it. We can and will remodel the remodel, we’re obviously most relieved that nobody on our team was injured.” [Photos by Christopher Layfield]
