The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Sunday reported an uptick in outages affecting radio and television stations that were knocked off the air due to Hurricane Helene late last week.
The number of AM and FM radio stations that were knocked off the air stood at 48 as of Sunday morning, more than three times the number of stations that were reported off the air one day after the storm made landfall.
Related: Fox Weather meteorologist saves Atlanta woman from flooded car
The FCC’s count now includes two additional states — Tennessee and Virginia — that were not originally counted in the agency’s initial report. The other four states counted in the report are Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.
Georgia remains the state with the highest number of AM and FM radio outages, with 19 FM stations out of service and three AM stations, according to the FCC.
The number of TV stations reported offline has also increased to six across the multi-state disaster area, up from one station reported immediately after the hurricane made landfall.
Most of the stations are offline due to power outages, though a handful suffered transmitter damage, according to reports from the stations themselves.
More land-based cable TV and broadband Internet customers are also being affected by the aftermath of the storm, with the FCC reporting nearly 1.2 million cable and Internet customers without service as of Sunday morning, up from 380,000 reported one day earlier.
While advocates continue to promote broadcast stations as a more-resilient form of communications during emergency situations like severe weather, the transmission towers associated with those broadcast outlets are no less susceptible to wind damage and power outages. Broadcast stations typically have backup sources of power, but small radio and TV stations in less-populated areas typically do not have generators and batteries that can keep their transmitters going during a storm, and the FCC does not require them to have a backup source of power as a condition of their broadcast license.
Hurricane Helene made landfall late Thursday evening near the town of Perry, Florida. The storm moved north, delivering heavy rain that spurred flash flooding across multiple states. Sixty people have been killed, according to Fox Weather.
