Those were medical emergencies, but far from being a disaster.
Today at 3:45 PM, we had a flash flood.
Rainfall numbers near 8 inches per an hour.
Already saturated ground, could not asorbe what had fell and the creeks rose and the roadways flooded and trees fell across the roads, and rocks washed across the roads and made them impassable, a car drove off the road and was wedged between two trees.
The funny part was when the Town Clown - cop called on his radio and said he couldn't get into the town to report to work - the roads were all closed.
The storm produced rotation - about 1 mile from my house and we almost had a tornado.
The old adage - nothing takes the place of boots on the ground is very true in this type of situation.
I put in a call to the National Weather Service in Pittsburgh, they had a hard time with the town names - since they were city slickers and they never been to Jefferson County or heard of the little towns that were undulated with rain.
The local repeater had some jerk off - old guy that lives in the high rise and doesn't have but a Technician Class License and no transportation, and was 20 miles from the epicenter of the storm - where he was at, all it did was rain a little.
When I asked the group to disconnect the repeater he was on, and the linked repeater system so we could use the counties repeater for emergency use only - they said they would monitor the situation and old Barney went right back to reading what he read on the television and giving his weather report from his high rise apartment.
The programmable scanner, programmed with all the public service radio frequencies sounded more like a commercial FM radio station then police, fire, ambulance.. Eventually the storm moved east and south and it washed out the main highway about 10 miles from my house. I shut my radio off and said forget it.
The people in the next county over did not say one word on their repeater, because the storm had not yet made it to their world.
The amateur radio club from the next county did not call on the radio and ask if the people in our county needed any assistance.
It all goes to show that they are not REAL HAMS!
If you wait until after a disaster to turn your radio on or offer to help, by the time you get around to doing it, the power will probably be off, the repeater will probably be in op, and the batteries in your handheld will probably be dead, or darn near it.
The sad part was when the highway washed out and there was a fire on the other side of the road and a fire company from 5 miles away had to be called to respond to the fire. Their crew was already deployed elsewhere and they had to call everyone back to respond to the structure fire..
It only goes to show that things can turn to crap in a blink of an eye and if you are not prepared, you can get caught off guard, and the people you think will be there to help you, probably won't!
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