Having some experience professionally in emergency response, no one trusts volunteers and less so for unknown volunteers. Ham radio is essentially a hobby and can often hinder rather than help, require more oversight and supervision than it’s worth and isn’t dependable when and if actually needed.
I understand new hams enter the hobby with a sense that EMCON is real. The marketing is effective albeit misleading.
Maybe in some places. Here in Coastal NC the EOC relies on Hams heavily when the grid goes down. Our club has an HF "Tarheel" antenna, a 80 meter Dipole, and a 2-meter vertical on the city's tower at the police department. In fact, at the hurricane drill earlier this year, the County EOC Manager introduced us as "My radio support, The people I turn to when county coms go down and we can't talk to our police departments, Fire Departments, and hurricane shelters".
Our last hurricane, which was a Cat 4, landed 10 miles from my house. We had Hams at every city hall, at every fire department, at the EOC, and at all the designated shelters. The Neuse river flooded to our west, the Newport river flooded to our east, blocking 70 Hwy so we were literally cut off fromt he world. The ambulances couldn't get to either hospital, the water was too high for the NG deep-water vehicles until three days after the storm surge subsided, and the USCG helicopters were flying people to hospitals until they were grounded due to bad weather. Newport set up a temporary medical facility in the fire department manned by....<drum roll> Ham operators, who were constantly relaying info to the ECO County Emergency Planners. So maybe in Arizonna or South Dakota no one trusts "unprofessional volunteers". Of course, there's "wackos" but they get weeded out and "uninvited" fairly quickly.
In Pitt County, the entire city was flooded. There was ONE HAM standing in the rain at the school football field with a handheld directing USCG and NG helicopters where to land and drop off people who were rescued off their rooftops.
In my particular case, I had an elderly resident here a few blocks from me who ran out of medical oxygen. No place was filling medical O2 cylinders for weeks, and even if they were, 70 Hwy was blocked in both directions. This lady ran out of O2. I had four scuba cylinders full of 40% O2 in my garage and was able to bring them to her. I called my EMT friend and he told her to use them and if her O2 monitor sounded the "O2 drop" alarm, there was nothing anyone could do for her. Life flight was grounded and 70 hwy was blocked in both directions. So go ask that lady what her opinion is on "unprofessional Ham volunteers".
And I might remind you, there's tens of thousands of "volunteers" serving in Afghanistan, Iraq, and South Korea right now doing the best job our F'd up goverment will allow them to do.
There's bad cops, bad doctors, bad lawyers, bad soldiers, bad politicians, etc. but we don't label them all bad because of the Derrick Chauvins and McMichaels in the group.
Our 9-1-1 center at the EOC has a dedicated cubicle complete with about six different radios, and they call US when the hurricane takes out the County coms, and the cell companies can't get the portable towers on site for a week.
Your comment is about as ridiculous as the "All black people are criminals" and "All mexicans are illegal" comments that appear every so often. Volunteers have their bad apples just like every other public service, and that's normal for any group. I never see "all nurses are bad and no one trusts them" comments when you see a nurse charged and convicted with abusing a rest home patient.
My transcript with NC EOM and CERT is two pages long, so volunteers CAN get the training to be para-volunteers if they put forth the effort and take their responsibility seriously. The whackos are weeded out before they ever get to the point that County EOC will issue them an access badge to get in the back door of the EOC (and lets them get into the donuts box).
Every Police Chief in the county, The Sheriff, the Fire Marshal, the VFD representatives, the State EOC officials, the Red Cross, the County managers, the State Police representatives, the DOT representative, the Salvation Army volunteers, the NC Dept of Ag representative, and the Baptist men were all at the drill. During Florence, fuelers couldn't get from Selma to deliver fuel, Duke Power couldn't deploy to get the grid back up, Local PD's didn't have the fuel to respond to any calls that weren't life endanger calls, but the Hams were at all the town halls in the County and the hurricane shelters relaying information to the EOC regarding what they needed and at the VFD's directing the USCG fast boat teams on what residents were in danger and needed rescuing.
Unless you've had to spend a week eating MRE's and sleeping on the dirty floor of the EOC unable to leave until the County coms are back up (while wondering how YOUR family was doing, and if YOUR house was still standing), with one female shower and one male shower to share with 100 other "unprofessional volunteers", maybe you don't understand the big picture. The last thing the mayor said to me at the last town hall meeting after he saw my "unprofessional" cap with my call sign on it was, "Is that your call sign?"..."Yessir. I live two blocks away on Lakeview Street. I have HF, 10 meter, 2-meter, 70 cm, a generator, and WinLink capabilities"..."Alright. I'm calling you next time I can't talk to my police officers or Fire Department." Our County coms are on a tower powered by a generator that has 1,000 gallons of "emergency" diesel to run it when the grid goes down. It doesn't take very long to go thru 1,000 gallons of diesel when the grid goes down, you have to share that with other emergency services, and you won't get more for a two weeks until the DOT gets the roads clear and the terminal starts operations again.
Furthermore, we don't show up until the County Emergency Operations planner ASKS us to. So obviously she has at least some measure of confidence in, trust in, and and need for our "services". I might not know the other volunteers personally, but since the NC governor requires all EOC "unprofessional volunteers" to have State mandated NIMS/FEMA/NCOEM basic training, I know they have training and I can be confident thay take their job seriously. I have to pay out of my pocket to attend the Emergency Management classes, pay put of my pocket for my First reponder classes (NC doesn't pay for the classes for "volunteers") , and have to invest my time at the training events that I otherwise could spend out laying on the beach watching bikinis walk by, so no normal person invests all that time and money just to be a whacko and get told to hit the road.
Yeah I know there's no shortage of whackos with a "Ham operator" badge to flash, a Boofang, and the obligatory orange vest and gung-ho pretend authority with no training other than YouTube who decide to show up and get in the way. But I respectfully ask you please don't put all volunteers in the same category with the whackos.





