[grc] On This Remote Island, Everybody Surfs the Airwaves

[Brian Shiratsuki]

Radio Freedom is where Réunion turns if big news hits or a parrot escapes

By PATRICK MCGROARTY
August 5, 2015

RÉUNION ISLAND, France—When beach worker Johnny Begue and his
colleagues found what looked like a piece of wrecked airplane on this
far-flung tropical island last week, they knew who to contact for
help: Radio Freedom.

“We found some kind of plane debris,” Mr. Begue’s deputy on the
cleaning crew, Cédric Gobalsoumy, told host Isabelle during her
morning show last Wednesday. “Ma’am, I don’t know how to tell you
this: It’s a wing from a plane.”

An hour later, the rocky beach on Réunion’s northeast coast was
swarming with local journalists and police.

Here in this tiny French territory 500 miles east of Madagascar, Radio
Freedom has turned out to be the first port of call for everything
from lost dogs to missing husbands and even things that wash up from
the sea.

Investigators say the object Messrs. Begue and Gobalsoumy found may
have come from the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 that is believed to
have crashed in the Indian Ocean last year with 239 people on board.
The barnacle-clad wing part was flown to Paris, and an official
analysis is set to begin in Toulouse on Wednesday...

<http://on.wsj.com/1hiM69b>