Thanks for the tip! Almost.a year and a half after a new communications tower went up at Myrtle Reservoir Park, the old one it’s replacing is finally coming down. The crane on the right side of our photo will be used to take down the old tower (above right) by Friday, according to the Puget Sound Emergency Radio Network. As explained in our November 2019 coverage;

PSERN will primarily be used by law enforcement, fire fighters, and other emergency personnel to communicate with each other during E-911 activities – from small incident responses to major emergencies like earthquakes. The PSERN system is comprised of 61 radio towers engineered to provide the best coverage available using direct, line-of-sight technology between towers to communicate with each other, in combination with other technologies.

The cost of the new West Seattle tower – at the city’s highest elevation – was estimated at $800,000, a fraction of the PSERN’s nearly $300 million cost. Voters approved the creation of PSERN by passing a ballot measure in April 2015; this slide deck from a 2014 discussion has more of the backstory. We’ll be checking back on the demolition as the week goes on.