Talk:Prometheus Methods Tower Services, Inc.

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Prometheus Methods Tower Services, Inc.

New Tower Design: November 2003

  • "Blocks came up again last November at a technical conference Berg attended in Hill Air Force Base in Layton, Utah.
"He showed a new design for cell phone and radio towers built to the top from reinforced concrete blocks, instead of more costly steel.
"'He was really kind of excited about it,' said Raquel King, who works at the base. 'The importance of the technology was that you could do this easily in Third World countries.'" [1]
  • "Nick's tower design is incredible. They are pored-form concrete blocks. The blocks assemble to form a tower. They are 'internally guyed'-making it a 'three wire, internally guyed concrete block tower'. Running through the center of each of the outside blocks (not the center key blocks) is a narrow PVC pipe that the guy wire runs through. This guy is then attached to a steel frame sitting on the ground and tensioned down (with a wrench). Nick first demonstrated this tower design to the world at a conference where I met up with him in Hershey, PA on October 30th, 2003 [see below]. We were there together and I (feebly) helped him in whatever way I could to assemble the tower. The conference was the 19th annual meeting of the Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters. (PAB)" [2]

The Building Blocks: "Bovl Block"

"By building them from his concrete blocks, Berg could make the towers out of whatever kind of sand or dirt was at hand. They would be easy to build, maintenance-free, and readily available. And they would be the perfect vehicle for countries struggling to get ahead in the 21st century." [3]
"Each of the blocks would be at least 4 feet long, and fit like giant Legos." [4]
".... the idea for a concrete tower first took shape several years ago when Berg traveled to Uganda as a college student. Later in Kenya, he worked with Masai villagers to craft early versions of the bovl blocks, showing them how to build towers that served double duty as both anchors for radio gear and storage containers for fresh water, ... ". [5]
"Bovl, according to the Yiddish Dictionary Online, can mean to grant or to accord." [6]
At the time of his death, Nick Berg's dream was finally taking shape.
On a small Lancaster County farm near Quarryville, Pa., in a wooded area halfway up a hill, a grid of steel rods crisscrossed the bottom of a 12-by-12-foot pit dug about five feet into the ground.
It was the foundation for a 199-foot-tall communications tower that would be built from massive, interlocking concrete blocks made and designed by Berg. Each of the blocks would be at least 4 feet long, and fit like giant Legos.
He called them bovl blocks. Bovl, according to the Yiddish Dictionary Online, can mean to grant or to accord.
"We were going to build the first permanent [concrete] tower here," Scott Hollinger, Berg's crew foreman, said standing over the hole. "It seemed like an idea with merit."
A huge, concrete radio tower is probably not a practical idea for this country, but in the Third World, where a conventional steel tower would not only be prohibitively expensive, but hard to come by, it would likely be a hit, Hollinger said.
By building them from his concrete blocks, Berg could make the towers out of whatever kind of sand or dirt was at hand. They would be easy to build, maintenance-free, and readily available. And they would be the perfect vehicle for countries struggling to get ahead in the 21st century.
Indeed, he had already set up a subsidiary of his company, Prometheus Methods Tower Service Inc., in Kenya.
"This was the master plan - he would be the owner of multiple towers and then rent space on them," Hollinger said. "That was how he was going to build his empire."
Hollinger, 37, a tree surgeon, landscaper and Marine Corps veteran, met Berg when he answered Berg's ad for a climber.
"I was always interested in the tower game, and the pay was good," he said. He joined Berg's company in January 2003.
Hollinger said the idea for a concrete tower first took shape several years ago when Berg traveled to Uganda as a college student. Later in Kenya, he worked with Masai villagers to craft early versions of the bovl blocks, showing them how to build towers that served double duty as both anchors for radio gear and storage containers for fresh water, Hollinger said.
By last fall, Berg was ready and eager for the engineering community to see the foundation of his dream.
He buttonholed Dale Gehman, vice president of the Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters, and said he wanted to be a vendor at the organization's annual engineering conference that was held at the Hershey Lodge and Convention Center last October.
His exhibit: a 20-foot model of his concrete tower.
"I had to get a special exception from the convention center because the tower was so heavy," Gehman said. "But to me, it was totally fascinating."
The night before the conference opened, Berg arrived with the concrete blocks, a flatbed truck on which he had rigged up a crane, Hollinger, a few friends - and plenty of energy.
"He started to set up at 6 p.m. and when I left at midnight, he was still working," Gehman said. "I came in in the morning and he had an American flag on top of it. It was one of the highlights of our show."
Edd Monskie, vice president for engineering at Hall Communications, a Lancaster, Pa., firm that owns radio stations, said that in his 30 years in the broadcasting business, he had never seen anything like it. But he liked the concept.
"For Third World countries, it sounded like a great idea," Monskie said. "They would just come right into the 21st century."
Berg was an idealist who wanted to help people and make the world a better place, said his friend Tom Clardy. And the concrete tower was a typically down-to-earth approach to solving a world-class problem, he said.
"For his solutions to work they had to be practical and they had to use the materials at hand," Clardy said. "He would do things the way he thought they ought to be done."

Kenya

  • "Hollinger said the idea for a concrete tower first took shape several years ago when Berg traveled to Uganda as a college student. Later in Kenya, he worked with Masai villagers to craft early versions of the bovl blocks, showing them how to build towers that served double duty as both anchors for radio gear and storage containers for fresh water, ... ". [7]
  • "Indeed, he had already set up a subsidiary of his company, Prometheus Methods Tower Service Inc., in Kenya." [8]
  • "A year ago [in 2003], Nick Berg went to Kenya to do 'about the same thing' he was attempting in Iraq - building the infrastructure, his father said." [9]

Uganda

"Nick enrolled as a freshman student in the College of Engineering at Cornell in the Fall of 1996. He spent the Spring 1998 semester in Uganda through Cornell's Study Abroad Program. He took a voluntary leave of absence from the university after completing the Fall 1998 semester.
Berg "spent the spring semester of 1998 in Uganda ... as part of a development study program with [the School for International Training's Study Abroad program] ... said Rebecca Hovey, the dean of SIT's Study Abroad program."
"While in Uganda, Berg studied the country's language -- Lugandan -- and taught brick-making techniques to locals in that country, said Hovey.
"While there, he wrote a thesis paper entitled, 'The Experiential Learning Unit as a Tool for Development', according to ... Robin Swett, the SIT professor who spent four months with him in Uganda."
"Swett said his thesis paper discussed an innovative press for brick construction. While in Uganda, Berg helped raise funds for locals to purchase a press, she said."
  • "He ended up in Uganda, a poor nation on a poor continent, taking soil samples, trying to develop a brick that would not require water. He wanted to build communications towers, to spread knowledge, so that all those kids he was befriending might have a chance at something better.
"Nick traveled to Africa at least twice, returning each time with only the clothes he wore. He had given everything else away. He told stories of standing in a village market in northern Uganda, talking local politics in his impassioned way with a Muslim cleric. Are you a Christian, the cleric demanded. No, Nick said, I'm Jewish." [10]
  • Berg "helped people in Uganda chisel wells and bridges." [11]
  • "It [in 2003] wasn't the first time he was abroad. As a college sophomore, he had gone to Uganda for an engineering project that involved making building blocks out of mud and cement.
"'And then you put it in a press, and it made a block. And the advantage of it was it could be made on site,' Michael Berg recalled.
"He shared his food with the family while he was there, and when he came home he left all his belongings and the block press." [12]

Ghana

  • "Nick Berg, 26, the American who was beheaded in Iraq, by an al-Qaida affiliated group, had traveled several times to Third World countries to help spread technology. He had previously traveled to Ghana, where he had purchased a $900 brick-making press for a poor village and taught villagers how to make bricks." [13]
  • Berg "taught villagers in Ghana how to make bricks." [14]

Iraq

  • "Berg's parents and brother and sisters are liberals and anti-Bush and antiwar in equal measure, according to friends and the bumper stickers on their cars. Nick was not. He believed in President Bush and the liberation of Iraq. He went out to play football with Lorenz and another friend last December. It was a balmy day and, as always, they talked about everything. Toward the end, Berg spoke of going to Iraq, where he would climb and fix communications towers -- and put American flags on top. He wanted to make some money, and he wanted to be part of building something good.
"'He believed that you can't understand anyone if you fear them,' Lorenz says. 'The power of his vision was much greater than our fear for his safety. He believed he would emerge safely.'
"There were two trips to Iraq and his e-mails from there read so often like travelogues of a young American abroad. There are stories of bus rides through dusty towns and glimpses of distant green hills -- perfect for exploring! -- and the joy of trying to pick up a little Arabic. He's reading of Judaism and Farsi and history -- " [15]

nickberg.org

nickberg.org has links to:

  • one entry from 2002 reads "Prometheus Methods Tower Service, Inc. .. An insured tower company based in the Delaware Valley"

Miscellaneous

  • April 29, 2002: "Anybody familiar with Prometheus Methods Tower Service ( owner, Nick Berg) out of the Phila. PA area? I have their packet, it looks good, but would like more info."

Nick Reported Missing

See Prometheus Radio Project.

  • A possible connection with Nick Berg:
"Pete Tridish of the Prometheus Radio Project based in Philadelphia says this:
"Community radio doesn't have a person in Baghdad - well, actually we do, but NPR can do things that we just can't do." [16]

Comment: Given that Berg is a freewheeling tower builder and this guy is in a basement in Philadelphia masterminding a pirate radio hostile takeover of the FCC, is it conceivable that these two guys never met each other? More to come. Plautus Satire 03:23, 29 May 2004 (EDT)

  • "Pete Tridish" speaking at A.N.S.W.E.R. rally: [17]
"Pete Tridish, Technical Director for Prometheus Radio Project, and a well known DJ for the historic Radio Mutiny Collective, who will talk about Clear Channel Communications."

Comment (Plautus): And Berg's dad listed as an "enemy" for his association with A.N.S.W.E.R. Link is getting thicker, still not conclusive, though. Certainly looks like Berg and "Tridish" certainly had many chances to meet.

Comment (Diane): Prometheus Radio/ Pete Tridish has many connections to the folks with Free Speech Radio News, who had a reporter over in Baghdad for a while. It's much more likely that Pete was referring to the FSRN reporter than Berg, in my opinion.

Comment (AI): Before moving the above material about Nick's blocks and new tower design to the main article (perhaps even creating a separate article), would like to do some more fact checking here and there. It looks more and more to me like the connection to his alleged beheading/death/disappearance has more to do with his towers and blocks--and what they represented and made possible--than with him being on some kind of terrorist hit list. I don't see the connection to the ANSWER rally or enemies list as causes to eliminate him. The connection with Prometheus Radio, and the threat that independent radio--and the erection of radio towers all over the Middle East--seem like (although via lopminded logic) "reasons".

I can see the ANSWER thing and the FBI investigation--at least as "reported"--as connected (red herrings or distractions). After all, there is little online "evidence" about his building methods until after he is gone from the picture. Nick was a one man cause, perhaps backed or associated with Prometheus Radio, but a one man cause nonetheless.

AI

Comments?

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