KOOP was here, 1995-2006 (Photo By John Anderson)
Not Again
It's deja vu all over again, only much worse. In the early hours of Saturday morning, a four-alarm fire broke out just off Sixth Street at
Taste nightclub and quickly spread to the adjacent buildings, with 67 firefighters eventually needed to douse the blaze. (The
Austin Fire Department had not determined a cause at press time.) One of those structures,
304 E. Fifth, housed
Sweatbox Studios and
KOOP Radio and was previously damaged Jan. 6 in a fire. Unlike Sweatbox, which relocated to the
Nevele Eleven studios down South, KOOP continued broadcasting from the building and was completely wiped out. "It looks like we're going to have to replace all of our studio equipment and our music library," station manager
Amy Wright said Monday. "I don't think anything is going to be salvagable." KOOP was insured, and Wright said they hope to get back on the air this week by sharing another station's facilities, but it will take at least six weeks for KOOP, which had planned to move after the previous fire, to find a permanent home. "We're a little down, but we're very resilient," she said. "This is not going to stop KOOP." The
Nervous Exits and
Ugly Beats play a benefit Friday at Beerland, the first of many.
