This manual is about Communications after a GRID DOWN event. We are not talking about RACES, ARES Traffic Handling or typical Ham Radio Emergency Services. It is about using communications to help yourself, your family and your community during a disaster.

For the purposes of this document, I want to differentiate between emergency and disaster communications. Emergency communications like Races, ARES, Red Cross, and FEMA communications are highly structured. You usually have to take some courses on message handling, the Incident Command System and things of that nature.

But disaster communications are more informal, with communications between individuals for their own benefit. Perhaps a fitting description would be tactical communications. It is very unstructured. It "just happens".

Here is a bit of background about how this document came to be.

I have been involved in emergency communications of one sort or another for many years. As an air traffic controller, as a hospital administrator with disaster communications responsibilities, I did search and rescue in Maine for many years and also was a communications asset for the National Red Cross. And of course I was very involved with amateur emergency communications in Maine and now in Arizona.

It was in my capacity with the National Red Cross that I was involved with Katrina. Their ECRV or Emergency  Communications Response Vehicle was a really impressive communications asset. I was deployed to Abita Springs which is just north of New Orleans. They had literally hacked their way into a large county facility. The interstate was blocked by trees wires and debris. This was an ideal location for a large resource center as it was at the end of the bridge across lake Pontchartrain to New Orleans.

They set up a large feeding station, capable of creating over 40,000 meal a day. The logistics and communications issues were complex and the ECRV was put to good use. I ordered stationary equipment, Satellite links, VOIP phones, radios and such to meet their needs so the ECRV could be re-deployed to other locations, always at the front edge of the Red Cross activities.

While at Abita Springs I noticed that there was very little communications with either New Orleans or the interior of LA. I  scanned the amateur frequencies and other than the health and welfare and other EmComm traffic there was little to hear. I was curious how the amateur technology was being used by the average ham. I did not hear anything.

I was re-deployed to various locations in Louisiana. First to a small town which had lost its entire communications structure. Again the ECRV served until equipment was ordered ordered and deployed. As I moved from one place to another around New Orleans and north into Louisiana, I listened for individual ham activity. I heard none. Ham radio could be so useful for the individual, yet there was no evidence of any personal use whatever. This was really the origin of this seminar. After Katrina, I was deployed to Miami for hurricane Wilma. Again I listened, and again heard nothing.

During the intervening years since Katrina, I have spoken with a lot of hams that have had a similar experience. So the concept of this document was formed. Create a document that helps the individual ham be more effective should he/she become involved in a major disaster. Then present that document along with hands on demonstrations at QuartzFest 2014. Then make the document and its revisions available, free with as wide a distribution as possible.

The ability to communicate within and outside of your local area will be a tremendous help. And you, as a ham have a very valuable tool. Ham radio is a communications medium unlike any other. But like most things, you have to know how to use it and the equipment must be ready. Getting your communications system together now, is something real and tangible you can do to prepare for an uncertain future. So let us begin.


NEXT: The Disaster Environment.


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