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Posted by Tony Toews \[MVP\] on April 13, 2009, 12:21 am
>As a ham, I have to ask where was the amateur radio communty in this.
>It's been proven time and again that amateur radio is the only thing
>standing when landline and cell services go down.
Preparing for disaster: Phone outage tests emergency workers
And officials in Santa Clara and Monterey counties are praising ham
radio operators not only for their quick response, but also for coming
through when state-of-the-art technology failed. Amateur radio
operators, armed with their antennaed boxes - the true wireless -
became the eyes and ears of police and fire on the streets.
They were able to communicate with police and firefighters, who were
using their own two-way radios.
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_12119261
>Ham radio may be still standing when cell and landlines are down, but
>it's not operational. Short of having hams drive around with
>loudspeakers advertising their presence, there's no way to make the
>citizenry aware of their capabilities.
Where are the citizens going to go in an emergency when the telephone
system doesn't work? Town hall, fire halls, hospitals or similar
sites. So that's where the amateurs would be. In the above story
near a school. In other areas amateurs provided communications to
neighbouring municipalities.
BTW I suspect a number of the radio systems the emergency services [use]
depend on fibre or other telco connections between the various radio
repeater sites around the city. I wonder if they were sitll working.
Amateur radio is very much into new technologies. For example, Winlink
2000 (http://www.winlink.org/) is a distributed, redundant system for
moving emails via amateur radio dozens of miles or thousands of files
without reguiring any other infrustructure other than amateur radio
equipment. Granted these emails won't be large or contain videos but
in a disaster situation they are invaluable for getting messages
through.
Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Please respond only in the newsgroups so that others can
read the entire thread of messages.
Microsoft Access Links, Hints, Tips & Accounting Systems at
http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm
Tony's Microsoft Access Blog - http://msmvps.com/blogs/access/
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>It's been proven time and again that amateur radio is the only thing
>standing when landline and cell services go down.