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Old 09-15-2014, 02:55 PM   #1
Mr. Ham
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Join Date: Aug 2014
Posts: 95
Default Disaster Preparedness

Does anyone on this forum believe that if there is a Disaster that the government is going to run right out and save you?

A local ham radio club had a meeting a couple of months ago.
The topic for the presentation after the meeting was Disaster Preparedness and Digital Modes.

My friend took a straw pole and found that out of the 36 members in the club, only 10 of them had a working HF radio.
Out of 36 members in the club, only 12 of them had a Two Meter Mobile radio installed in their vehicle - the rest were all walkie talkie people.
The same was true with their home stations - only 10 of them had a Dual Band or even Single Band VHF / UHF radio in their shack, with a working antenna and power supply.
The rest were all operating with a handheld radio, checking into their local club net - from time to time, with their No Traffic.

Of course there was NO TRAFFIC - because they never did anything amateur radio related during the week!

When my friend tried to show them how to operate digital modes, they all refused to BUY a sound card interface, and only two of the 10 that had a working HF radio had a modern HF radio - that had a serial port and didn't have tubes.

This club was considered to be the Premier amateur radio club in the area.

When my friend tried to explain to them the attributes of being able to operate digitally in times of trouble, it went in one ear and out the other.

My friend asked the group - what would happen if you had a flood here tomorrow, Who would respond, how would you respond, what would you do if your repeater died?

The whole group laughed because they lived on top of a mountain, in a secluded valley and the flood waters had never struck their town, because they lived near the source of the local river.

The very next day, the clouds turned black, the skies opened up and the rain fell in inches per an hour and the river swelled and overflowed and the town was under water in just a couple of hours.
The river divided the two sides of the town and the one fire company's building was right next to the river and they were basically trapped until the water receded.

The electric went out, followed by the one local repeater being taken off the air for scheduled service by the county.. The other local repeater was up on the opposite hill, with only a couple of hours of battery back up - it died and had to be resuscitated via a gasoline generator.

The one thing no one thought of was that when the town flooded, the gas stations had water infiltration in their tanks, rendering the gasoline useless.
And the stations did not have electric to pump the gasoline.
The alternate repeater owner only had a limited supply of gasoline - because his lazy - cheap family members wouldn't fill up their vehicles gas tanks and frequently ran out of gas and robbed the emergency supply of gasoline to keep their vehicles running.

So how prepared are you?
How prepared is your club?
Does any of this sound familiar to you?
Do you think that in an emergency that you will be able to drive right up to the convenience store and buy what you need, or that the road will even be open.
How many of you thinks that a handheld radio is all the more that you need in an emergency?
How many of you do not own a modern transceiver?
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