Members of the Marion County Ham Radio Club spent Saturday passing simulated emergency traffic for a host of local agencies.
“We passed simulated emergency messages on behalf of served agencies, such as Marion General Hospital, Columbia Fire Department, Latter Day Saints Church, Red Cross, Salvation Army, Pearl River Valley Electric Power Association and others,” Emergency Coordinator John Bowman said. “Over the next year, we’ll be reaching out to other agencies and organizations and soliciting their participation in this exercise. We want to be able to provide communications for all who are affected by whatever Mother Nature throws our way, and we do that with these exercises.”
Nearly a dozen amateur radio operators fanned out across Marion County to participate, according to Bowman. Stations were set up at the Marion County Emergency Management office in Columbia, Tri-Community Volunteer Fire Department’s Good Hope station and the Morgantown Volunteer Fire Department station.
The SET is a nationwide exercise in disaster response and emergency communication, administered by the American Radio Relay League’s emergency coordinators and net managers, in which volunteers respond to a mock emergency or disaster, such as an earthquake or hurricane. Members of the Amateur Radio Emergency Service, the Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service, the National Traffic System, SKYWARN and other groups work together to plan and develop simulated emergency and disaster scenarios, in consultation with the various served agencies that rely on radio amateurs during emergencies.
The SET gives volunteer public service communicators the opportunity to focus on their capabilities, strengths, and weaknesses while interacting on the air with radio networks, called NTS nets. It also provides a public demonstration — to serve agencies such as the Red Cross, state and local emergency managers and the news media — of the value that amateur radio provides. The SET helps radio amateurs gain communication experience using standard procedures and a variety of modes, under simulated disaster-response conditions. Participating groups earn points toward an overall SET score, adding a competitive component to the activity.
Ham radio operators provide critical communications during unexpected emergencies across America, including hurricanes, tornadoes, winter storms, wildfires, earthquakes, terrorist attacks and other events world-wide. Amateur radio operators are usually the first to provide rescuers with critical information and communications. Their slogan is “When All Else Fails, Ham Radio Works” as they prove they can send messages in many forms without the use of phone systems, internet or any other infrastructure which can be compromised in a crisis.
“The quickest way to turn a crisis into a major disaster is to lose communications,” said Rez Johnson, section emergency coordinator for Mississippi ARES. “From Katrina in Mississippi to the earthquake and tsunami in Japan to tornado outbreaks in Missouri, amateur radio has provided the most reliable communication networks during the first critical hours of these events.
Because Amateur radios are not dependent on the internet, cell towers, or other infrastructure, they work when nothing else is available. Amateur radio operators have no weak links in their communication networks because the only thing they need between their radios is air.”
Amateur radio is growing in the U.S. There are now more than 700,000 amateur radio licenses in the US, and more than 2.5 million around the world. Through the ARRL’s Amateur Radio Emergency Services program, ham volunteers provide both emergency communications for thousands of state and local emergency response agencies and non- emergency community services too, all for free.
To learn more about amateur radio, go to www.emergency-radio.org.
Pictured Above: Area amatuer radio operators gathered to work the SET last weekend at the Marion County Emergency Mangement Agency’s offices on Courthouse Square. | Photo Submitted
