Winter Hill in danger as fires merge and close in

More importantly the Morborne mast was a local node point for mobile phone networks and other private and utility comms systems. Winter Hill will be the same

There's one thing people are forgetting, yes there's a risk the mast might come down if the fire gets too close and severs a guy, but they're going to have to (at some point) make a decision whether to cut the power to it. Don't want to risk that coming down with power going up the thing.

I also read on Twitter that firefighters have now been evacuated from the Hill entirely as it's too dangerous.

My understanding is Virgin take their relays off of Freeview, so they might be affected. I'm sure they could route a satellite relay of the local services if necessary.

The fire has diminished in the area surrounding the Winter Hill mast and there is growing confidence that there will be no service disruption. Huge thanks and gratitude to the Emergency Services for their incredible efforts in very difficult circumstances.

— Arqiva (@arqiva) June 30, 2018

There are VSWR trips that will do that the moment the feeders mechanically fail. If there’s a total structural collapse it’s pretty academic whether or not the antennas and transmitters are still powered anyway !

There’s shedloads on that mast, aye. All sorts of microwave relays and phone transmitters.

Walked a lot around there, always went up between Christmas and new year if it was snowing.

Many people are reliant on terrestrial though and won't have the choice of satellite or online. Then there's radio of course, not everyone will want to hook a phone up in their car to listen to Radio 2 online.

If the worst come to the worst and there's a need for a temporary mast and replacement transmitters it will be interesting to see which services are prioritised and how quick they come back. It's not got as many services from it as Crystal Palace or Sutton Coldfield but there's still a lot, and many are directional for example the 3 local TV Muxs. I can't imagine they'll be top priority or much room on a temporary mast for the aerials


Big football match coming up too, will be interesting to see if the North West can watch that

I would have thought the SD PSB muxes which carry BBC One NW and ITV Granada would be the highest priority, followed by the PSB HD mux and then the commercial SD muxes with the locals and COM 7 and 8 being down the chain.

Whatever happens, it'll be at vastly reduced power with fringe areas in the Granada region having no or weak reception.

Virgin do have fibre feeds of some channels, though I don't know if that's the case with the regional services or if its just for certain headends... or if Virgin still even have headends

Wasn't a lot of that on the BT Tower next door?

There's another tower (or more) at Winter Hill, that apparently has the non broadcast stuff on it

A lot of stuff on the Peterborough BT mast next door were old horn antennas which were removed to allow the temporary DAB relay mast to be installed.

The fire has diminished in the area surrounding the Winter Hill mast and there is growing confidence that there will be no service disruption. Huge thanks and gratitude to the Emergency Services for their incredible efforts in very difficult circumstances.

— Arqiva (@arqiva) June 30, 2018