“We have six people in Sooke who form the Sooke Emergency Group. We get together every Wednesday evening at the communications room at the fire hall to practice our skills and make sure that we’re ready, if and when we’re needed,” said Gorse.
“The services provided by these ham operators have the potential for being a critical link to the outside world in the case that communications are cut with the rest of the world.”
“People don’t realize that we are not only able to talk to others, we can also communicate through emails, retrieve data… essentially do everything needed to communicate with the outside world,” said Gorse.
This actually happens in cities all around the world. Here in Cape Town, there is a weekly Hamnet radio bulletin on Wednesdays with regular exercises conducted with other disaster management services. Amateur radio operators are not only able to maintain communications using local repeaters, but can on the HF bands communicate directly to cities 100’s or 1000’s kilometres away. Part of the exercises often involves RaDAR (Rapid Deployment Amateur Radio) which is a concept for operating an amateur radio station anywhere, anytime and even in adverse environmental conditions.
See https://www.bclocalnews.com/news/ham-operators-stand-ready-in-case-of-disaster/
#disastermanagement #amateurradio #emergencies
#^HAM operators stand ready in case of disaster – BC Local News
Amateur radio may be the only communication left after major calamity