URGENT! American Red Cross Still Needs a Steady Flow of Amateur Operators:
from
ARRL
Website:
http://www.arrl.org/
on
September 11, 2005
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URGENT! American Red Cross Still Needs a Steady Flow of New Amateur Operators:
The American Red
Cross Montgomery Disaster Relief
HQ and ARRL have made an
urgent call for more Amateur
Radio operators.
This weekend, Greg Sarratt, W4OZK, ARRL Alabama
Section Manager, called ARRL with an urgent renewed
call for Amateur Radio operators for the Gulf Coast
Red Cross disaster relief effort. Sarratt noted that while
the initial response to the need for volunteers produced
a very gratifying steady flow of operators, the number of
new operators has dropped dramatically. He
commented that just this morning he had 15 shelters,
kitchens, and other support facilities pleading for
Amateur Radio communications back to Red Cross
Katrina Disaster Relief Headquarters in Montgomery,
AL. Although many HF stations are set up around the
region, the current need is for deployable 2-meter
equipment. Amateurs should continue to bring a
complete HF, VHF station and all personal supplies
when traveling to the Gulf Coast region.
"Contrary to what one may conclude from listening to
the public media, cellular and land-line telephone service
is spotty or nonexistent throughout the region. Amateur
Radio remains the primary source of emergency
communications for a number of critical disaster relief
efforts," said Sarratt. Greg and his team in Montgomery
have deployed over 75 volunteer operators so far that
have traveled from all over. Many of these operators are
approaching burnout or need to return to their families
and jobs. Sarratt noted, "If an operator comes from a
served facility, we need to put in another operator or we
will cause a break in the vital communications linkage."
Sarratt said that he is very concerned there may be an
unfortunate misconception that operators are no longer
needed for the disaster relief effort. In fact, the Red
Cross expects to need a large number of Amateur
Radio volunteers for at least another two or three weeks
to ensure the people inside those shelters receive the
proper care they deserve.
Send your availability, deployable departure date and
duration to the Montgomery Alabama Amateur
processing center at:
DR871-06RTT-RCO3@usa.redcross.org.
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Please clarify "show up with full HF and VHF
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by KF6IIU on September 12, 2005
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Mail this to a friend!
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What exactly do they mean when they say "show up with complete HF, VHF station and all personal supplies?" Does this include power for the HF rig?
This pretty much rules out responding without your own vehicle, right? Are hams who cannot drive in being encouraged to participate? How much food, water, etc, should each ham be expected to provide for himself? One week? Four weeks? Does the Alabama section expect that sufficient hams could come from nearby states to fill the need, or is there a need for fly-in hams who will be limited in the amount of gear they can bring?
I think this begs the question of whether the whole ham emergency reposnse thing should be restructured. Your average ham is not exactly a team player, in my experience. It's even hard to get an effective reponse in my local area to a small-scale disaster, like a hazardous spill we had last week where people were evacuated, in spite of dozens of hams on the roster.
However, effective, quick response to a disaster is best exercised by pre-trained, pre-drilled teams with pooled resources, similar to the SAR teams that are showing up all over the gulf coast. There seem to be few such ham em-comm teams. Such teams need to be formed.
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