[MarinTeams] From the ARRL Newsletter - "The Last Line of Defense"

[Bill Smith]

This forum is loaded with preparedness information.  Experience of Katrina,
Christchurch, Austrialia and Japan shows the need for reserve power, a
communications network, and redundancy in order to sustain communications in
a disaster.  Earthquakes are identified as the most difficult disaster from
which to recover, both because of their widespread destructiveness and
because follow on aftershocks are also destructive.  Although there is a
wide interest in cellphone use and texting, Amateur radio is identified as a
primary last line of defense that can provide information immediately after
the onset of an incident.

>From the ARRL Newsletter:

"The Last Line of Defense"

In an FCC forum on earthquake communications preparedness, Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA) Administrator Craig Fugate described the Amateur
Radio operator as "the ultimate backup, the originators of what we call
social media." The forum-- held May 3 at FCC Headquarters in Washington,
DC -- brought together officials from the White House, the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS), the United States Geological Survey (USGS), FEMA,
the FCC and the private sector. Fugate and FCC Bureau of Public Safety and
Homeland Security Chief Jamie Barnett gave the opening remarks.
In an earthquake communications preparedness forum sponsored by the FCC,
FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate praised Amateur Radio, saying "...when you
need Amateur Radio, you really need it."
Later in the forum, Fugate spoke more on Amateur Radio. "During the initial
communications out of Haiti, volunteers using assigned frequencies that they
are allocated, their own equipment, their own money, nobody pays them, were
the first ones oftentimes getting word out in the critical first hours and
first days as the rest of the systems came back up," he told the forum. "I
think that there is a tendency because we have done so much to build
infrastructure and resiliency in all our other systems, we have tended to
dismiss that role 'When Everything Else Fails.' Amateur Radio oftentimes is
our last line of defense."
Fugate said that he thinks "we get so sophisticated and we have gotten so
used to the reliability and resilience in our wireless and wired and our
broadcast industry and all of our public safety communications, that we can
never fathom that they'll fail. They do. They have. They will. I think a
strong Amateur Radio community [needs to be] plugged into these plans. Yes,
most of the time they're going be bored, because a lot of the time, there's
not a lot they're going to be doing that other people aren't doing with
Twitter and Facebook and everything else. But when you need Amateur Radio,
you really need them."
You can watch a video of the forum on YouTube. Fugate's remarks begin at
18:55.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzx-kvo1i_Y