Was also involved in the Alaska Earthquake and in the Los Angeles disaster
handling health and welfare traffic for Red Cross. Lots of memories for
sure.
Barb K1EIR
-----Original Message-----
From: For blind ham radio operators [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Curtis Delzer
Sent: Saturday, April 20, 2013 10:37 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Is there still a need for ham radio operators??
that is some article, reminds me of so many emergency situations I happened
to get involved with, e.g. 1964 Alaska earthquake, 1971 Los
Angeles earthquake, (both on HF), and hundreds of welfare type
traffic messages handled via CW or phone patch during the Vietnam era and
certainly later. It is more important than ever since many people totally
depend on their cell phones to be portable and working when things get
rough, when in fact we all know that cellular towers are fragile when the
earth moves, or there is a big fire, etc. etc.
mud slides in Santa Cruz, CA during the 1989 earthquake, again I was
involved in Sacramento handling traffic too and fro etc.
At 09:38 AM 04/19/13, you wrote:
>Is there still a need for ham radio operators during emergencies,
>during the most serious weather situations? Read this, and I think the
>answer will be abundantly clear.
>
>Yesterday, April 18, we had a forecasted severe weather alert here in
>the mid-west, expected to hit several states including Illinois,
>Missouri, Kentucky, Indiana, among others. Fortunately, the storm
>wasn't nearly as bad as originally predicted, but it is a good thing
>because there was a massive failure in our various emergency
>communications systems. Here is an email just received by one of our
>local emergency communications centers sent out this morning:
>
>
> Many things went wrong on Thursday and they could have cost a lot of
>lives. We should be thankful this morning that the severe weather
>event underperformed.
>
> What went wrong on Thursday
>
> 1. The bulk of the regions NOAA Weather Radio's failed. An
>extremely rare event. This was due to a communication problem with a phone
line.
> 2. Some weather radars went down or could not deliver data in a
>timely fashion
> 3. Land lines were down at the National Weather Service because of
>the communication line failure.
> 4. At least one major college network server that pushes severe
>weather information out to the public went down
> 5. The National Weather Service chat program failed for many people
>- local emergency managers, media, and the NWS use this chat service to
>relay information to each other during severe weather events.
> 6. WeatherCall wasn't working for some - this is a service that
>calls you when a warning is issued for your location. The phones would
>ring and say it was WeatherCall but there would be no further voice
message.
> 7. Some people said their text alert systems also did not work for
>them
> 8. Some local media computers crashed - causing delays for them in
>retrieving information.
> 9. There were times people could not get onto the National Weather
>Service web-sites leading up to the event. Slow servers or timing out
issues.
> 9. And finally, but not least - the forecast itself ended up being a
>near total failure (we got the heavy rain part of the forecast right).
>
>Personally I have not seen so many technology failures since the 2009
>ice storm. That was the last time the weather radios went down
>(because of catastrophic power failure).
>
>
>What this statement from the emergency weather center didn't say is
>that emergency ham communications during the severe ice storm in 2009
>and then, again, yesterday, was the primary source of solid, reliable
communications.
>
>73,
>Ron, K8HSY
>
>Dr. Ronald E. Milliman, retired Professor Western Kentucky University
>Ph: 270-782-9325
>Email: [log in to unmask]
>
>Chair, American Council of the Blind Public Relations Committee
>
>Chair, American Council of the Blind's Monthly Monetary Support Program
>(MMS) Committee
>
>President: South Central Kentucky Council of the Blind (SCKCB)
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