There's a social media application called Nextdoor and we have used it to form some kind of neighborhood group. At a recent meeting, CERT was brought up so we're trying to get a lot of the local neighbors CERT'ed. I brought up the topic of amateur radio as an alternative means of reaching County OES. During the Northridge earthquake, the cell towers were jammed and the land lines were so jammed you couldn't even get a dial tone. Fortunately, one of the neighbors works in OES and he immediately thought it was a great idea. I volunteered another SBARC member so he and I seem to be emerging as the alternate way of communicating out (hoping the repeaters are working so we won't need to go to Simplex).
We're looking at it more as augmenting CERT especially since I've never been able to get involved with ARES.
From: "Jay Hennigan" <jay@west.net>
To: "Thorsten von Eicken" <tve@rightscale.com>, "Rod - Traveling" <rod@sbatv.org>, "Walt" <zharasty@verizon.net>, "Alain Michel" <opalockamishabob@yahoo.com>, "William Talanian" <w1uuq@cox.net>, "sbarc list" <sbarc-list@lists.netlojix.com>
Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2015 11:25:28 PM
Subject: Re: [Sbarc-list] ARES activation needs, was: Redundant systems
On 3/12/15 22:25, Thorsten von Eicken wrote:
> I don't want to turn this thread into a long polemic, but after a couple
> of years of participation with ARES I gave up because it became apparent
> that local authorities were not involving us pretty much regardless of
> what we could do. That was at the time of all the fires in the area and
> ARES was not mobilized a single time (unless I missed something). I
> didn't have the sense that it was SBARCs or ARES' fault but I'm also not
> really interested in those politics anyway... My conclusion was that I
> was wasting my time and I'm not trying to blame anyone here for this.
> Thorsten
I can see both sides of the coin. ARES and SBARC have value in case of a
*telecommunications* emergency. We aren't firefighters, we aren't
paramedics, we aren't traffic cops, we aren't mountain rescue people. At
least we aren't in the context of ARES and SBARC although some of us may
be as individuals. If the landline, cellular and public safety voice and
fixed and mobile data networks are operational during a fire, we
probably shouldn't be mobilized. We kind of went down that road many
years ago with close ties to Search and Rescue where ARES was activated
very frequently in cases where there was no need for communicators.
Eventually both groups realized that there wasn't a need.
Andy's example of the Centurylink fiber cut in Arizona is a good example
of a situation where amateur radio could have been quite useful. It
would be interesting to talk to the area hams and any local ARES groups
to see how, if at all, they contributed.
And, as Bill and others have pointed out many times, our contribution to
the community in terms of what we do on our own in terms of
communication systems is itself an asset, even in the absence of any
emergency. In my opinion we need to toot our own horn a bit more when it
comes to the things the community takes for granted such as the vessel
tracking systems, weather stations, ELT receivers, and remote camera
systems that SBARC provides. These are real benefits to society that
people not in-the-know assume are just there "in the cloud" or are
provided by the taxpayers.
--
Jay Hennigan - CCIE #7880 - Network Engineering - jay@impulse.net
Impulse Internet Service - http://www.impulse.net/
Your local telephone and internet company - 805 884-6323 - WB6RDV
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