Quake: The Breaking Story : Television: NBC broadcasts were limited by a loss of power and the lack of a backup generator at its affiliate station.

NBC, the TV network that brought the nation some of its first dramatic coverage of the Whittier earthquake two years ago, came in last with the least during Tuesday’s devastating San Francisco temblor because its Bay Area affiliate had no power source and no backup generator.

Sitting atop Cathedral Hill, about five blocks from San Francisco City Hall, KRON-TV was unable to get pictures of the 6.9 killer quake on the air until 7 p.m., nearly two hours after it struck. As a direct result, the San Francisco NBC affiliate was also unable to feed the nation’s top-rated network, leaving Tom Brokaw and other NBC affiliates, including KNBC-TV Channel 4 in Los Angeles, at the mercy of secondary sources.

“We lost all power,” KRON news director Al Goldstein, a three-year veteran of Bay Area broadcast news, said Wednesday. “We couldn’t transmit and we could not receive anything from any remote unit.”

Indeed, Tom Capra, KNBC news director, said that KRON’s computer system was down for about an hour and the station was even cut off from routine news wire services, such as Associated Press.

“ We were FAXing them wire stories about the quake,” Capra said.

During and immediately after the 5:04 p.m. shaker, ABC and its owned-and-operated San Francisco outlet, KGO-TV, took advantage of their position as the World Series network by flashing helicopter and Goodyear blimp shots of the devastation to their TV audiences. In Los Angeles, KABC-TV Channel 7 took full advantage of the feeds, making “Eyewitness News” live up to the full implications of its name.

CBS affiliate KPIX-TV had its own visuals and commentary within 30 minutes. Though the transmission cracked and flashed on and off, KCBS-TV Channel 2 in Los Angeles filled much of its airtime following the first two hours after the quake with KPIX video feeds.

But KRON and its sister station in Los Angeles, KNBC, failed to get in on any of the early action.

“We got killed by KABC because they had pictures first,” KNBC’s Capra said Wednesday. “Our affiliate was off the air and that was a bad break for us.”

Some KRON footage began to appear on CNN and other NBC stations at about 6:42 p.m.--but only because the San Francisco office of NBC’s Sacramento affiliate, KCRA-TV, picked up KRON’s then-weak signal and, unbeknownst to KRON officials, put it up on a satellite feed.

KRON’s problems could have been greatly reduced, if not prevented, a former employee charged Wednesday.

“I told them, ‘When the big one comes, we’re going to need an emergency generator and we’re not going to have it,’ ” former KRON news director Mike Ferring said.

Ferring, who left the station nearly two years ago and is now news director at the ABC affiliate in Sacramento, KOVR-TV, told The Times that he and other news executives had warned KRON’s owner, Chronicle Broadcasting of San Francisco, Inc., of the need for a backup power supply for its four-story building on Van Ness Ave. year after year.

“They did not have emergency power and never have had it,” he said. “Every year it went into the proposed budget and every year it went out because they said we were supplied with power from two trunk towers and there was no need for a backup.”

Unlike the other two network affiliates, which are located in free-standing buildings near the Embarcadero center in San Francisco’s financial district, KRON is located further inland in an area that, ironically, did not receive much of the brunt of the temblor.

“What we did was start ferrying tapes in right away,” KRON’s Goldstein said. “We stayed very competitive once we hit the air.”

Unfortunately, that wasn’t until after 7 p.m., after nightfall. KRON ran into its second big headache at that point: no light for pictures.

“Where there were fires and headlights . . . and there were lots of headlights . . . we could show (the devastation),” Goldstein said.

But the helicopters used by KRON, as well as the other Bay Area stations, are not equipped for extensive night time video coverage, according to former Bay Area newsman Tom Vacar.

“None of their helicopters are equipped with the million candlepower lights that we have down in Los Angeles,” said Vacar, who is now a reporter for KNX-AM (1070). “One of the great advantages of working at a station in Southern California is that the stations do have lighting, so you can shoot after dark.”

Vacar, who maintains an apartment in the devastated Marina area of San Francisco, was dispatched to the Bay Area along with KNX helicopter pilot Bob Terr less than five minutes after the quake, according to KNX news director Bob Simms. Terr, who also had a video camera crew on board, flew up along the Interstate 5 freeway, landing at Crissy Field in the center of the San Francisco just before 9 p.m. Ironically, L.A.-based Vacar was able to deliver on-the-spot radio reports to his KNX audience 500 miles to the south before KRON could go on the air with its first videotape.

KOVR’s Ferring said that KRON did not have an earthquake contingency plan while he worked there and he didn’t believe they had developed one since he left. KRON’s Goldstein said the station did have one but was unable to put it into effect. As of 3 p.m. Wednesday, KRON’s studios were still on emergency power supplied by a portable generator.

“I have a feeling there isn’t a helluva lot you can do to prepare for it, no matter how many contingencies you’ve got,” Ferring aid. “At one point, in the mid-’80s, there was an attempt to get Bay Area broadcasters to get together and come up with a plan to handle this kind of major disaster.”

Like the backup generator that Ferring had consistently fought for at KRON, the quake coverage master plan never came into being.

“There’s a foolish competition that goes on (in broadcast journalism),” Vacar said.

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