| Ham radio operators help keep contact in emergencies (Apr 10) |
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Technology changed the world of communications, but in a crisis, Bill Pook said, you can still depend on a reliable old standby - ham radios.
When all else fails, the Region 5/6 emergency manager said, amateur radio operators will still be on the air, and can be a link to the outside world after a tornado or other incident knocks out cell phone towers, power lines and other forms of communications. "They can communicate with Lincoln or Omaha or agencies like the National Weather Service in the event that all other forms of communication are not available," Pook said. "They can also play an active role in the emergency medical response communications network in a pandemic or mass casualty event," Pook added. "They have an established system already in place. We can take their hobby skills and use them for an emergency backup and they are extremely reliable." Dave Theophilus, president of the Pioneer Ham Radio Club, said the Fremont Area Medical Center has ham radios and another was installed recently at Three Rivers District Health Department in Fremont. Club members, in a crisis, would man those stations. Ham radios, he explained, can operate almost anywhere and, with access to multiple frequencies, talk to almost any agency. "You can use your car battery," Theophilus said. "The equipment we use is pretty low-powered, you can clip onto a battery and run that thing for days. There's a lot of ways you can power it." Amateur radios and the weather service have been partners for decades, Theophilus said. Retired from a career in the weather service that started at the Norfolk radar station in 1964, Theophilus has been a "hammer" since 1958 while a high school student at Norfolk. "I got interested in weather through amateur radio because in Norfolk we didn't have any (weather) spotters at that time," he explained. "Through my career in meteorology, we made great use of amateur radio operators as spotters, then the amateur radio network started to grow," he said. "Weather spotting is one of the biggest things we do." He remembered when the weather office in Des Moines, Iowa, lost communications and a ham radio at Valley established a link, and amateur radios provided communications in 2005 during Hurricane Katrina. During bad weather these days, if he's not spotting, Theophilus is at the base station in his basement, simultaneously monitoring radio frequencies, television reports, the police scanner and Internet traffic to and from the weather service. "What happens during severe weather, or any type of weather, is hams tend to go toward their radios and see what's going on," he said. Technology has enhanced their abilities with software that decodes more than two dozen broadcasts simultaneously, and microchips that make radios lighter and smaller. The Internet gives operators precise information about weather and solar activity - critical for people bouncing radio waves all over the world. "For a while we thought we were going to be a dead hobby, the Internet would destroy amateur radio, and I don't think it has, it's actually enhanced the hobby," Theophilus said. The Pioneer Club has approximately 30 members from Dodge, Saunders and western Douglas counties. They meet at 6:30 p.m. the last Friday of each month at Gambino's on East Military Avenue. "We'd like to get more young people," he said, "but with texting, cell phones and instant communications, it's hard to show them the magic of talking to someone on the radio. They can text somebody in another country. "I got interested even before I was a teenager, just listening to the short-wave radio in my parents' house before television," he continued. "What young person today would even listen to a short-wave radio? You just don't do it anymore." The number of amateur radio operators started to climb when the Federal Communications Commission dropped Morse code as a licensing requirement, Theophilus said. "Part of the excitement is trying to go around the frequency and finding someone from another country," he said. He has reached people from France, Japan, the Netherlands and other far away places. "I remember years ago when I talked to a weather station, the ones that send the balloons up, they were well above the Arctic Circle," Theophilus said. "Then I went to work and actually used the data they were collecting as part of my forecast that afternoon." |
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