A Message to Agencies
Why would you choose to participate in an exercise of this kind? You may find this a busy time of year and you have recently installed communications equipment that you have been told is “fail proof”. In addition to this, you have backup equipment that should be there if you’re primary equipment fails. You may also feel that your community is immune to a disaster of the type that is described in the overview of the exercise. After all you may be in a mountain region that is far removed from coastal areas. If all of the above assumptions were true, you would be correct in your assumptions that you don’t need backup assistance from the ham radio emergency communications.
Looking at these issues one by one. All communications systems must have a transmission and receive system to convey information from point “A” to point “B”. This may be via phone line, microwave, or radio signal. Another option is satellite, which is very expense and has very limited availability due to that cost factor. Satellite systems have worked OK in normal situations but are overwhelmed by heavy use in disaster. This occured with BGAN during Hurricane Gustov in 2008. So, your resident equipment may survive the onslaught of disaster but the connecting infrastructure is subject to the elements and has a history of failure. So why is Amateur radio different? In the area of short-range communications, hams use VHF and UHF FM radio for voice communications. This is the same system that most government, fire, rescue, police, medical and other agencies use. The difference is that hams may have access to 30 or more repeaters that would support their effort from a single location. This would not be true of agencies. If a ham has a station or repeater failure, that ham installed his system and therefore doesn't’ need to wait for a service facility to respond to the need for repair. Hams that lose all their antenna structure can string up a run of common wire and be back on the air in less than one hour on HF radio. I have talked to over 100 counties of the world with just a piece of wire for an antenna. The reason that hams are the ideal backups is they are a source that can place a system in operation quickly where none existed prior to the disaster. With a quickly installed wire antenna the ham can communicate across the town, county, state or nation. Our area Winlink systems provide email in the event of local Internet failure. This system uses VHF radio as a link to a gateway station that has an Internet connection via satellite. Therefore if all local Internet service is down such as phone dialup, DSL, cable, and microwave linked Internet Service, the Winlink system will be up and running. If the satellite system would fail I can get on HF radio and connect to gateways throughout the world. This system is connected to servers that are located at multiple US locations and several that are located in other areas of the world. All messages are stored on each of these servers so if a server or two goes down the system will not miss a beat. FEMA has a Memorandum Of Understanding with the Military Affiliate Radio Service to use this system as their backup.
In addition to these reasons there are many agencies that are active in disaster that have no communications system of their own but rely on ham radio as their primary communications system in emergencies. If you are going to have radio contact with these agencies, you will need to have Amateur Radio in your EOC or agency. These will include such volunteer groups as the Southern Baptist, with feeding, chainsaw crews, water purification and laundry along with chaplaincy and crisis counseling. This includes the Salvation Army with the SATERN (Amateur Radio) radio program. Mennonite Disaster Service also uses their ham radio network called the Menno Net for communications. Amateur Radio will give your agency interoperability with many agencies and groups that will be active in disaster. These may be groups that you have not heard about but come a major disaster they will arrive on your doorstep if requested. Your community will thank you for their presence.
Looking at the issue of being immune from heavy damage in your area due to the thinking that your area is not visited by hurricanes. Just talk to those throughout the Commonwealth that were visited by Hurricanes Hazel, Hugo, Camille, Floyd, David, Connie, Diane, Donna, Cleo, Agnes, Gloria, Fran, Bonnie, and Gaston. There are other tropical storms that have also impacted Virginia and created the need for emergency communications support by the ham radio community. One of these tropical storms brought the Roanoke Valley the “Flood of 85”. Many of these storms tracked through the southwestern part of the state. The most deadly of them all was Hurricane Camille that hit the mountains of Virginia and killed 154 people in the Commonwealth. More lives are lost in inland flooding than from the storm surge of hurricanes. A hurricane or major tropical system can track though any part of Virginia that includes the area that you live and serve.
If the local ham group has not contacted you, give them a call and let them know that you would like their support in this exercise. If they have contacted you, get back to them and let them know what areas that you would like for them to cover during this drill.
