Category Archives: Community Emergency Response Team

Are we too connected?

Only a few weeks ago the San Francisco Bay Area was hit by what many were predicting would be the “storm of the century”.  We were warned via all the traditional media to expect intense rain, flooding, horrible traffic, basically the end of civilization.

When it hit, though it did mess up traffice, ad cause flooding in areas prone to this, the storm as a whole was no where near the worst.  Only two years ago, we were hit by a much worse system.  Yet, that storm was not promoted the extent this one was, in part because only the traditional media sources really promoted it.

This time we learned of the storm through tweets, Facebook pokes, and comments (I wish they’d add gooses too), emails, texts, Skpye calls, blog posts and al kinds of prods and nudges that the virtual word offers.  Plus, if you happend to be a dedicated geek, you would get these on your phone, tablet, computer (both desktop and laptop), watch, glasses, earbuds, and maybe even rectal implant (gulp!).

On the one hand, it is good to stay in touch and be aware of whats going on around us.  But, whenever I install a new APP and suddenly my watch (a Pebble which support notificatios) starts letting me know that somebody else has a higher score than I do in Candy Crush, I ask myself if this has really gone too far.

Yes, I can just disable the notifications of that, but shouldn’t the default for a lot of this extraneous stuff be NOT to notify you of useless notices

Just a thoughts.

Is HAM Radio dead???

Type “HAM Radio is” into Google and the first word that pops up to complete your search is “dead”.  When many of us think of Amateur radio, we think of the crabby guy in his “radio shack” in the basement surrounded by glowing boxes calling out “CQ…CQ” trying to talk with other radio operators in far flung places like Russia or South America.  Or, possibly the pickup parked next to the diner with a multitude of antennas, and stacks of mobile radios mounting on the cab and an ARES emergency radio operator sticker on the rear bumper along with those for he local Fire Department, possibly police and maybe a CERT emergency team sticker as well.  HAM appears even in popular culture.  Tim Allen, in Last Man Standing has a very typical  HAM base station.  Maybe you’d remember the character Jodie Foster played in Contact as a young girl trying to reach other operators “DXing’ as it’s called.  Or, this gets rather obscure,  Sandra Bullock in Gravity had a short conversation with a HAM operator in Iceland when she was in the International Space Station.  Ironically, NASA has tried to make sure there is at least one HAM operator in the ISS for HAM operators to contact.  

In this day of universal Cell Phone access, Skyping across the globe, and satellite communications, HAM seems rather…well..quaint and definitely out of place.  It’s a plaything for older guys who don’t have anything better to do with their free time and like to tinker.  

To a point, I pretty much agree with this view of it if you are talking of HAM base stations and trying to see how many long distance contacts you can make.  But, there’s a new development, thanks to he Chinese, that shows real promise to re-energize this dying art.  A company, Baofeng, currently sells a perfectly acceptable hand held radio which can be used for HAM communications for about $30 on Amazon.  Though you can’t call long distance directly, which requires a full tilt base station radio which can runs thousands, along with a large antenna and a slew of other equipment, with the aid of repeaters, that are everywhere and take the low wattage signal from an HT radio, boast it, then retransmitt it, it’s easy to speak to other operators all over your region and even state.  Some systems even use internet connections to send your connection to other repeaters all over the world. Plus, if you remember Gravity and the HAM operator there, HT radios, LIKE THE 30$ BAOFENG are the most popular to talking to the ISS or one of the hundred of amateur satellites in orbit.  The result is, you can get into HAM for under $50.  

Then, if you check for your local HAM club (the best place to start this is the National Association for Amateur Radio  website (http://www.arrl.com) which as lists, you can drop by their meetings.  Often they hold evens where you can get classroom lessons in the morning, then take the test in the afternoon and earn your Technician level license which gets you a callsign and allows you to do basically 90% of what you can do on HAM radio.  In fact, many operators never go beyond the basic license.  

Now, you may wonder, in al honest, WHY WOULD I EVERY HAVE ANY INTEREST IN THIS!!  Well, you may have seen a previous posting of mine abut CERT emergency aid.  One group that is absolutely indepsensable in dealing with Emergencies is Amateur Radio operators.  Often times, the power is out, phones lines are down, cell towers are offline and the only way to communicate is through radio.  The fact that HAM repeaters are pretty low tech and often have battery backups means that they usually survive disasters.  Though the local fire and police have their own radios, HAMs are key to handling many of the communications they often don’t have time to handle.  Yes, cell companies often truck in portable transmitters and get the set up, but this often takes a day or more.  And, if you live on an island, like I do, which will probably lose all means of connecting with the mainland in the base of our most likely disaster, and earthquake, HAM will be key means of communications.  

Plus, if you are a gadget nut like me, and you’re looking for a whole new world to explore, HAM may be the ticket.  You might think that radios and computers could not be more different but several members of the original Home Brew Computer club, the birthplace of the PC, were HAM operators looking for something new.  

CERT, you too can help out in an emergency…

I recently completed my last day of CERT training.  CERT, which stands for Community Emergency Response Team, was created in L.A. shortly after the Northridge earthquak as a means by which to provided trained teams of volunteers to help out in situations where the existing emergency services need some help.  Today, it’s grown to a program that many cities and countys have.  Here in Alameda, our local fire department actually runs the program, which stars with a series of 6 classes that cover foundations in Personal Emergency prep, Hazardous material, Terrorism, emergency first aid (this includes stopping bleeding, opening airways, splinting broken limbs, moving victims, examining them, and triage), basic fire extenguisher and hose handling, and search & rescue.  Once those are complete, and you’ve taken the oath of office, you get an indentification card, a helment, a vest, googles, and a duffle bag to collect your CERT equipment.  After that, there are a wide range of more advanced classes from wilderness first aid, advanced search & rescue, and emergeny radio operation to name only three.  Everything is free and is very hands on.  Regular simulations are put on to keep people in tune in case they are needed.  

The training is very well done.  Generally it’s pretty straight.  It was a little distrurbing when we were going through triage where there are 4 possible ratings: urgent help needed, delayed help ok, minor injury, and dead.  We learned that you check pulse, breating, and attention.  If they have pulse, but aren’t breathing after two tries, they should be considered decesased.  It seems a bit draconian, but if you put it into context where there might be hundreds of potential victims and only a limited number or Training EMT’s available, it begins to make sense.  Additionally, one of the requirements was also to go out and look at places near your home that might have hazardous material.  Interestingly, the one near me with the most was Firestation 1 of the Alameda Fire Department.  Of course, if you head to the west end of Alameda and he former Naval Airstation, you would find a wealth of nasty things.  

Once you’ve got your ID card, you can join a team which is put on call.  In an emergency situation, you may be called upon to help provide emergency services to supplement the local fire and police.  Here in the heart of Earthquake country (and on an island which over half is rated likely to have the most severe shaking and possible liquifaction when the “big one” hits, this is even more important.  Ironically, what CERT has provided in the immediate time has been teams that helped find seniors who wandered out of their retirement homes and got lost.  Ultimately, the amount of time it takes isn’t great.  But, it’s a really interesting way to get involved.