[KYHAM] Amateur radio commo ops during ice storm

[kf4fmz at bellsouth.net]

Thank you Mark for your hard work and great rollup on the Ice storm. Something tells me many others out there have similar stories to tell. Hopefully with time someone can pull all these together for one big after action report. That would take a lot of free time :-)

Take Care
Patrick
-------------- Original message from "Mark A. Garland" <mark.garland at murraystate.edu>: -------------- 


> 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 
> 
> 
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