Re: [Swprograms] Katrina

["Scott Royall" <royall@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Richard,

You have once again hit the nail squarely on the head. You captured the
gist, the core of my comments. For example, Nagin and Blanco should've felt
like they had hams epoxied to their right hips. When they had questions for
others, hams needed to already be contacting the ham attached to the
appropriate person. 

I am clearly envisioning a role I haven't seen hams in since the '70's. It's
not as if they don't have the technology. No power? No problem. Toss a few
special "care packages" up on the roof of the Superdome, each with a little
repeater (on a different frequency pair} and plenty of battery power. The
military is already literally throwing little ROVs into nasty situations.
Why not repeaters? The role I imagine would require some hams to be real
"portable" and dedicated. Others, like me, could be useful either as
intelligent "hubs" gathering and dispensing info or as mobile repeaters (my
batteries can run a radio for quite a while, and I've been known to even
mount a generator on my wheelchair. See what I mean about technology
existing?).

-----Original Message-----
From: swprograms-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:swprograms-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Richard Cuff
Sent: Sunday, September 11, 2005 6:32 PM
To: Shortwave programming discussion
Subject: Re: [Swprograms] Katrina

So from what I gather, what needs to happen is that amateurs need to
embed themselves in local emergency preparedness operations so they
can work alongside the officials.  As I recall this is what Victor
Goonetilleke did so effectively in Sri Lanka last December.

Do local amateur radio clubs do this?  It would seem the Katrina
disaster would open a window of opportunity for local hams to approach'
their state and local emergency preparedness agencies and lobby to be
included in the process.

I will leave the argument as to the protocol (CW, phone, packet,
psk31, whatever) to others.

There was a very interesting article in the Wall Street Journal last
Monday (I think) that detailed the communications challenges faced by
New Orleans political leaders.

They managed to communicate in the early going primarily via Vonage
Internet-based telephony using equipment "borrowed" from Office Depot
in the early hours of the storm.

There was no mention of the role of amateur communications in any
aspect of this article -- computer hobbyists (today's hams?) played a
bigger role..

Richard Cuff / Allentown, PA

On 9/11/05, Bill B <ka2emz@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> >
> I must of missed the post Scott replied to. Howver Scott I STRONGLY
> disagree that hams need to step up with a more modern method than CW;
> during the first few hours after the storm roared ashore I passed a few
> health and welfare messages  via CW. Voice communications were rendered
> useless as was psk31; and lets face it, in the south east BPL is
> probably a moot point for some time. (I am chuckling of late hearing
> news reports of the internet carrying health and welfare traffic, which
> the media calls 'safety messages' into and out of New Orleans.)  I know
> this is sorta off topic for this list- but trust me, when all else
> fails, CW will still do its job!
>

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