[CVRC] Reality Check

[Dick Flanagan]

Reality Check by Harry Lewis, W7JWJ

My first operation during a disaster, and there have been several, was 
three days and nights spent in an Army pup tent situated on a high bank of 
the Columbia River in the Hanford area. The river which soon crested at 
27.4 feet above flood stage. That was in 1948 and 1500 messages were 
transmitted mostly via CW and all signed by Army leadership. Were message 
forms used? Of course not. My prime receiving operator did have standard 
message forms of sort - a roll of toilet paper in his typewriter. Did I 
mention that an Army truck was also transporting the xyl through three feet 
of water to a hospital where she would give birth to our first offspring. 
That was reality.

A third of a century later I was in Yakima, Washington when Mt. Saint 
Helens erupted. The next 24 hours were spent transmitting messages by voice 
from the police station and in which building was also located the Red 
Cross. Were message forms used? Of course not. I received messages scrawled 
on the back of envelopes, brown paper torn from shopping bags and napkins 
that had once been at Denny's. Certainly all messages were signed by 
appropriate Red Cross or police officers.

Visualize the next ARES meeting you attend. You have your handheld, laptop 
computer and all necessary forms tucked into your briefcase which is at 
your feet. There is also is a roster of ARES/RACES people, digital node 
addresses and all incident commanders. You are totally prepared. Suddenly 
the room shakes and the lights go out, water floods the room and your 
briefcase floats with the crest down the stairs into the basement. This is 
reality.

Try it you'll like it. At the next ARES meeting turn off the lights and ask 
members present to program their handhelds, assuming they brought them, to 
a simplex frequency and check in with the NCS who is in an auto in the 
parking lot. In reality most will be hard pressed to find the exit door.

After each incident agencies do a de-briefing and plan for the next 
disaster whatever it might be. Certainly the subject of improving 
communications is of prime interest. Are amateur operators invited to these 
future planning sessions? Why not? This is reality. This is the future.

73, Harry W7JWJ
ARRL Western Washington Section Manager