Ham involvement in Santa Clara County communications outage

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Joe Pistritto <jcp () jcphome com>
Date: April 10, 2009 3:02:06 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Ham involvement in Santa Clara County communications outage

Dave: for IP if you like.

(This message came to me through the Fremont ARES net coordinator.   
ARES in the bay area (Amateur Radio Emergency Service) is fairly well  
coordinated with City fire or police (varies by county which one it  
is, in my county, its Fire that coordinates with hams mostly).  They  
were used in the outage to run traffic while normal comms were down.

 -jcp-
 Amateur Radio Station: N3CKF

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 23:57:48 -0700
Subject: Santa Clara County Communications outage

Fremont ARES Members,

Almost 24 hours ago individuals cut telephone fiber optic cables in  
southern Santa Clara County which resulted in large scale telephone  
outages, both landline and cell phone.

Santa Clara County officials called out ham radio support and the news  
excerpt below details their involvement:

> Ham radio operators organized themselves to assist with  
> communications between hospitals. About 25 operators were handling  
> the radio traffic while another 50-60 had signed up to fill in when  
> other volunteers got tired, operator Craig Smith said.
> Ham radio operators are trained to help during emergency situations  
> where traditional communication methods are unusable, Smith said.  
> The operators helped with communications during last summer's  
> devastating wildfires and were critical during the 1989 Loma Prieta  
> earthquake.
> Teams of operators set up at Dominican, Sutter and Watsonville  
> Community hospitals, as well as at NETCOM and a local American Red  
> Cross office. They handled tactical traffic and messages between  
> medical care providers, such as relaying information from one doctor  
> to another.
> "This is really big for ham radio," Smith said.

<stuff deleted related to Fremont ARES>




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