No commercials or disc jockey voices have interrupted the flow of music on Des Moines’ KKDM 107.5 this week.

The alternative station has not been able to play anything but music since its building was hit by the tornado that struck Des Moines Monday afternoon. KKDM is currently broadcasting from a temporary location at the tower that broadcasts its signal.

“[The tornado] ripped all the roofing material off the building,” said Rich Eychaner, president and general manager of KKDM. “Thirty-five years of roofing material was gone … rolled off like a sleeping bag.”

Three people were in the 10,000 square foot studio building at 1561 NE 53rd Ave. in Des Moines when the tornado struck at about 1:45 p.m. on Monday. Eychaner said no one was injured in the storm.

KKDM remained on the air until about 2:15 p.m. due to backup power supplies at the station.

“It’s unclear as to whether we went off the air because the tower lost power or because of the damage to the studio,” Eychaner said.

Eychaner said KKDM arranged to have backup broadcasting equipment shipped to Des Moines via airplane within an hour of the storm. The equipment arrived late Monday evening, and the station was able to broadcast Tuesday afternoon when power was restored to the tower location.

“We were [back] up in about 24 hours,” Eychaner said.

The station is currently only broadcasting music on the temporary system. Playlists from last week’s programming are currently being aired as the station adapts.

Eychaner said running advertisements and live announcers was difficult with the current equipment setup.

“[We have] everything from salvaged equipment to borrowed equipment,” he said. “A radio station is a complicated piece of engineering.”

KKDM hopes to have voices on the air sometime today, even if they must be taped at the old studio location and broadcast later from the tower. Eychaner said hooking up microphones at the tower would be a problem because of the noise from transmitters, fans and cooling systems.

“It’s like the roar of an airplane in there,” he said.

Having voices on-air would give KKDM the chance to tell their listeners their current status, Eychaner said.

“That would give us some capacity to inform our listeners what’s really happened to us, even if it’s recorded 10 hours before they hear us,” he said.

Roofers are currently working on repairing the studio building, Eychaner said, and the station hopes to move production facilities into the warehouse part of the building.

“They’ve told us we’ll be dry in half the building by Friday,” he said. “That would allow us to start moving things to dry off. Hopefully by next week we’ll have full production capacity back.”

Although KKDM is still in the process of rebuilding, Eychaner said he guessed the building sustained between $250,000 to $500,000 in damage due to the storm. He said it will take weeks to determine whether the electronic equipment that got wet will still be operable.