[KYHAM] Amateur radio commo ops during ice storm

[Mark A. Garland]

Could someone please cross post this on the KYARES refelctor, as somehow 
I've gotten off that list, and couldn't find on kyham.net how to get 
back on.

Please forgive me if you receive this more than once, I plan on posting 
this to several user groups. Also please forgive me for taking so long 
after the storm to write this, things are just now starting to look 
normal around here.

I've caught a glance out of the corner of my eye several of the emails 
bouncing back and forth about the good, the bad, and the ugly of the 
amateur radio response during the terrible ice storm that stuck our 
region several weeks ago. I wanted to tell my story, since it has a 
slightly different flavor.

As a little background, I work as a critical infrastructure protection 
researcher with a strong focus in telecommunications systems for a 
university in KY.  My lab is 100% funded by one of the alphabet soup 
federal agencies.  We really had a pretty good advance notice this storm 
was going to be a history maker several days beforehand.  This allowed 
everyone a chance to take a deep breath, charge their batteries, check 
antennas, etc.

I was tasked with providing communications to the regional coordination 
center that the KY division of Emergency Management had in Benton KY.  
This center was responsible for 19 counties.  We set up our systems on 
Monday afternoon, before the rain started.  The first two days, watching 
the ice build, and the power grid, telephone systems, radio repeaters, 
and so on slowly deteriorate, was a little surreal.  By Wednesday it was 
obvious that more than one person was going to be needed in the commo 
room.  I was asked to move to resource management and logistics, which 
you can imagine kept me busy running.  I put a call out on a couple of 
ham repeaters for help, with no answer.  However, I think that must have 
got people moving, because less than an hour later, one of the local 
hams Marv Kiehl, W9CFT, came in and set up some additional equipment. 
Then after a little bit Michael Delaney, KG4OWE came in to help.  Mike 
was a godsend for us over the next week, taking charge of all the 
communication efforts, and scheduling additional amateur operators to work.

Notice I said "all the communication efforts". During that week of ice 
hell, our 19 regional counties had varied means of operational 
communication means.  In our center, we had to juggle ham radio, public 
safety radio, satellite phones, MSV satellite radios, KYWINS public 
safety chat, VoIP phones, email, and more. We could not have done our 
job without the ham operators.  Did I say ham radios? No, I said ham 
OPERATORS.  Ham radio was only one tool in our toolbox.  Now when all 
else fails, ham radio is like that trusty old screwdriver in the bottom 
of our tool box, you know the one that always seems to get the job done. 
What our folks needed were operators that could effectively use ALL the 
tools in that box. The ham ops that stepped up to the plate and helped 
were able to pick up and use all of those tools to benefit the 
operation. They were not just "ham operators" or "MARs ops", nobody 
cared if they drank the ARRL cool aid or not. They were intelligent 
communications operators that professionally used every tool in the tool 
box, got the job done. Their flexibility in a disaster situation kept 
the center running efficiently.  I applaud them and all the ham 
operators everywhere that helped passed traffic from wherever they were 
located!

OK, I'll get down off my soapbox now.

Thanks and 73

Mark - K4SDI