Swan River radio staff scared after police say station was intentionally set on fire

The owner of a Swan River radio station says staff are feeling scared after police said the fire that destroyed their studio on Thursday morning was intentionally set. 

At 5:30 a.m. on Thursday, RCMP officers responded to a building fire at the CJ Radio studios on Main Street in the Manitoba town, located about 380 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg.

In a news release on Thursday, RCMP said the cause of the fire was incendiary and it led to extensive damage to the inside of the building. 

Police have launched an arson investigation. 

Police said CCTV footage from the area shows an unknown male riding a bike past the building before the fire started. Investigators are working to identify a suspect, police said. 

"The entire place was aflame in less than a second," said CJ Radio's Bill Gade, who runs five radio stations across Manitoba and Saskatchewan from the building. 

"We're pretty upset. Everything's destroyed, stations are all off, nothing is good, but we are still alive," he said.

Gade told CBC News the station began receiving threats on social media about a week ago, when he posted a social media update about a head-on collision that left three dead near Swan River on Canada Day. 

Gade said he's usually at the building around 5 a.m., but he was running late on Thursday. He said there is "absolutely no way would have gotten out" had he and his co-host been there.  

"Our staff are scared to go places. They don't know what's next … We just don't know. We're scared," he said. 

Gade said he is hoping to start feeding some content to his stations later on Friday, but they won't be up and running again for about two weeks as they try to replace the radio equipment that was destroyed by fire. 

"It took us 19 years to build five radio stations and get them all networked together and have them working perfectly. It's going to take some time to put them back together," he said.