This is all about self-reliance, and sharing the load. Hams in the disaster zone, creating a flexible network, in the disaster zone. A field station which can fill in the gaps immediately following a disaster, up to the time Emergency Services get boots on the ground. So we need to invest time, money and training resources required to put together a similarly equipped, all weather, man portable, off grid field station. What is important to understand from the disaster in Puerto Rico, is the importance of getting individual ham radio operators, clubs, and/or local organisations to take responsibility for themselves! Puerto Rico is the example, but this can happen anywhere. The only thing we know for certain is most governments will throw lots of money and resources at disaster recovery, without necessarily achieving a beneficial result for the people in the disaster zone. The Red Cross did deploy comms resources in cooperation with the ARRL, but that is an entirely different story. Emergency services took nearly a week after the disaster to get on site (not a criticism), so information into or out of the region (for normal prople) was effectively blocked. ![]() This also meant grid-Communications on the island were knocked out, along with local cellular networks. Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico knocking out grid power and devastating local infrastructure. ![]() If ever there was reason for ham radio operators to get onboard with the importance of off-grid power and communications for disasters, September 2017 would be it. This isn’t the first time it’s happened to the region, and definitely not the last. ![]() In September 2017, we saw hurricane after Hurricane ravaging the West Indies, Virgin Islands, and Caribbean in its entirety.
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