In one disaster after another, ham radio was the ONLY communication method that got through every time under any and all conditions. Public service radios are locked to the frequencies assigned to their service (police, fire, search & rescue, etc) and therefore these services cannot talk to each other or even hear each other.
Ham radio operators can hear ALL the public service frequencies and can transmit to some of them.
Cell phones and public and private hard wired telephones go down. FRS radios are not monitored by any emergency services, but they can be picked up on almost any inexpensive portable ham radio that covers the 2 meters and 70 centi-meter frequency bands.
In most emergencies the majority of the work is done by volunteers and they are only authorized to use ham radios, the ones that can hear any public service band and FRS bands.
The Red Cross depends on volunteer ham radio operators for their communications needs.
Ham radios are the only ones that can send voice signals both over the air and through the internet. They can also link into the phone system and place calls to wired and cellular phones through special ham radio repeaters.
In any emergency you have ever experienced or heard about through radio, television and newspapers, ham radio operators were heavily involved. Ham radio just doesn't get the press that other items do.
NASA sends at least one ham radio operator on all manned space missions.
Name a disaster, ham radio was there providing valuable and reliable communications. The list includes, but is not limited to the following:
Kobe Japan Earthquake, Salt Lake Tornado, both NASA shuttle disasters, Teton Dam break,
all hurricanes that cause damage to property (Katrina, etc), Mexico earthquake, Afghanistan earthquake, etc.
Most large parades use volunteer ham radio operators to coordinate parade units and parade float breakdowns.
Every type of race in America involves ham radio volunteers to some extent. 5K, 10K, and 20K races use ham radio volunteers to report on runner progress and problems. Bike races - same thing. Triathalons - yep, those too.
Thanksgiving day parades, Macy's Christmas parade, St. Patrics Day parades, Day's of 47 Parade and thousands more all use ham radio volunteers to keep the parade moving and report problems along the route.
The experiences of these ham radio volunteers in all these races, parades and other events give the ham radio operators valuable experience and training that is then put to work in disaster drills and actual disasters.
Have you ever seen a report on TV or in the newspaper that your local fire, police and emergency services groups held a mock disaster drill? Ham Radio was there, providing the link between the various services.
One emergency drill here in Salt Lake City involved all the Utah disaster groups and simulated a plane crash at the local airport. There were volunteer "victims" who were fited with special prosthetics that simulated various types of wounds. A command center was set up with a central radio for each of the emergency groups involved. Everyone knew the scenario for the drill and had been briefed. One little surprise was not revealed to the participants to see how they would handle this unexpected event.
Once the teams were all in place and the "disaster" had started and the teams were passing information to each other through the command center, the drillmaster cut the power to the command center van. All the communcations equipment (phones and radios and computers) went dead. Well, all except one. The volunteer ham radio operators always work disaster drills (and real disasters) using battery power. They kept operating while all others sat around trying to figure out how to pass vital information with no communications equipment. Finally they figured out that the only thing to do was to get the ham radio operators to pass their traffic.
Thus, I sometimes say, "when all else fails, ham radio keeps going and going and going and going..."
Find out more about how to get involved in ham radio. Just go to the Amateur Radio Relay League (ARRL) web site
here.
by O. D. Williams, Ham Radio Station N7OZH
