|
| Communication |
Communication after the storm
Amateur Radio operators set up emergency signal
Friday, September 16, 2005
By BART BARTHOLOMEW
Special to the Times
There I was, minding my own business, when the phone rang Sept. 1, three days after Katrina hit.
"Hi, Bart!" the voice said. "How would you like to get an Amateur Radio team together and provide emergency radio communications for the Mormon Church Humanitarian Services out of Gulfport, Miss.?"
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, to which I belong, promotes preparedness in members to weather a personal or area disaster.
Individual members are instructed to store food and water for personal disasters, and the church administers a vast welfare organization that stores commodities in dozens of Welfare Storehouses across the United States for distribution to the needy. These supplies allow the church to quickly react and to provide the very first humanitarian services at any disaster site.
Ability to communicate during an emergency is one important service.
The Huntsville Alabama Stake, a district of the church, has identified about 75 area church members who are Amateur Radio Operators. This band of volunteers has been preparing for a disaster by participating in weekly radio training nets, practicing to set up field stations by participating in the annual worldwide Amateur Radio Field Day exercises, and accumulating specialized equipment that can enable them to travel into the center of a disaster area and quickly set up efficient radio field stations independent of commercial power.
This telephone from the church's Dallas, Texas, Welfare Storehouse was an opportunity to prove our response capability.
Within 12 hours (early on Sept. 2), a four-man emergency communications team was on the road for Gulfport. Before the sun set that day, a 31-one foot antenna mast was erected with a high-gain dual band (two-meter and 70-centimeter frequency) antenna on top. A G5RV high-frequency (HF) band wire antenna was hung off the side.
A two-meter radio link had been established with the church's Slidell, La., Satellite Storehouse 50 miles west. The next day an HF band radio link had been established with the church's Dallas Welfare Storehouse.
Since the commercial power had been out since Hurricane Katrina had passed through several days earlier, this emergency communications center was powered by a portable power generator.
Over the next four-day period, this hot and sweaty communication team, Tom Runner AI4IR, Marv MaGill KG4UEC, Karl Bartholomew KB4TOV, and R. D. "Bart" Bartholomew KK4AI, teamed up with two young Amateur Radio operators from Albany, Ga., to handle numerous commodity orders to Slidell and Dallas.
In addition, this team provided communications from the Gulfport center of operations to other church buildings along the coast that were dispersing food and water to the local citizens. During these four days a three-day supply of food and water was dispersed to an estimated 6,000 local citizens from this one facility.
A dozen semi-trailer loads of food and water were unloaded into the chapel cultural hall, supplies that were promptly doled out the front door by 30 to 50 local church member volunteers.
It brought tears to the eyes of this band of communicators to see how these local members, who had experienced minor to major temporal losses of their own, would spend 10 or more hours a day organizing, boxing, and dispersing these goods to their neighbors day after day.
The Stake president, the ecclesiastical leader directing these humanitarian activities from multiple church sites between Pascagoula and Slidell, had had damage to his home, his business has been wiped out, plus his wife was being treated for cancer.
These people, once engulfed with this event, all reacted heroically with generosity. These astounding local personalities are all "Forced Heroes"!
The Times welcomes stories of temporary, full-time mission work by volunteers, whether locally or elsewhere, undertaken by faith communities in North Alabama. Please contact Kay Campbell for guidelines for submitting your mission stories. 532-4320 or kayc@htimes.com.
|
Created on 02/26/2005 03:51 PM by daleb
Updated on 10/13/2005 09:27 AM by daleb
|
|
|
|
