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)