Hi all! I hope this might be interesting to some . . . I'm sending it widely so it's not too ham-detailed. I may get into more of that later.
Last Wednesday, Alabama was hit by the worst weather disaster in our history, which set national records for tornadoes - greatest number, longest number of miles tracked, and probably greatest number of fatalities in a single day. Some areas further south were completely devastated. A world-record massive tornado tracked for a total of more than 430 miles from Mississippi to North Carolina. The track can be seen from space in satellite images. Check out this blog post about it: http://originalweatherblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/extensive-damage-in-tuscaloosa-al.html My county was hit as well, with several neighborhoods destroyed. Our number of fatalities was much lower, due to the differences in the weather but also due in part I believe to the efforts of the storm spotters that we have operating in this area. During the storm, I was operating on amateur radio, most of the time in the role of "Net Control Station", coordinating radio traffic between hams and the Emergency operations center. My family and I had to take cover three times during the day due to tornadoes tracking toward our house. Our county has a population of about 300,000 people. The area of greatest destruction in our county was in an area about 7 miles from my house. Photos of the destruction can be seen here: http://photos.al.com/4462/gallery/aerial_view_of_the_north_alabama_tornado_damage_from_april_27_2011/index.html Anderson Hills, Toney, Harvest, and Carter's Gin are all in that area near me. My wife Susan and I saw the tornado that struck there pass over our house, with the rotation forming. Toward the end of the day my fifteen year old son Nick (N1CKC) relieved me on the radio, as I was exhausted. He did a great job. If you're interested in this sort of thing, the radio audio from that day is here, but there's a big break in the middle from when we lost power until later when I was on generator power and had a free second to restart the streaming. I'm identified by my call sign AI4QR. http://www.ustream.tv/channel/madscientistsclub The entire area lost power during the event, due to damage to major portions of the grid feeding us. The transmission lines to the Brown's Ferry nuclear power plant (22 miles upwind of me) were severed, and the plant made an emergency shutdown. The design is identical to the Fukushima power plant. That was Wednesday. Wednesday night, I continued to operate on generator, and had all the network infrastructure in my house on the generator. My Knology internet stayed up until I shut down the generator, many hours after the power went out. It was dead the next morning, as was my phone service. I was asked by the EOC to confirm whether I could make HF contact with the state EOC and local Red Cross station on 40m while on generator power, and checked in and made those contacts. Incidentally, during the event I was streaming that audio, watching weather radar, looking up locations on google maps, and looking up ham radio call signs on the internet - all using 100% Ubuntu (Lucid). I was also getting occasional help from Kamal (KA6MAL) in CA helping decipher things that were hard to hear on the radio - he was listening to the streaming audio. Cell phone coverage was pretty bad right after the event. Calls would not complete, but SMS messages usually did, depending on the carrier. By far, Verizon customers have had the best service in the following days. Most of the time and in most locations, I have still had a 3G connection on my android. On Thursday I secured the house, scoped some things out, set up the camp stove and inventoried food and water, and prepared for the 5-7 days that we were told we'd be without power. Not much happened on Thursday except for ongoing search and rescue operations in the affected area. Personally, my family was in good shape. We had plenty of food, camp stoves, a generator with enough fuel for a couple of hours of operation each day (which we used to charge cell phones and batteries for the amateur radios). City water never stopped working for most of the area including us, but we have filtration devices or camping and would have been fine even if the water had stopped working. The county declared a dusk-to-dawn curfew. I'm a Red Cross volunteer for disaster relief, and on Friday I was asked to report to the chapter house to help. The chapter house is more or less the business office, not and end-point for distribution of services. There's a radio room there where communications with the county Emergency Operations Center (EOC) and field units are handled. My son Nick is a Red Cross youth volunteer, and went with me. We were put to work helping run extension phone lines, and extension cords to places where they were needed in the building. The building was under generator power, and not all areas had lighting or power outlets live. It turns out that my most valuable skill that morning was being able to deal with telephone and networking cabling. Nick and I spent most of the day running cables, then on radio duty in the afternoon. Saturday, I showed up again at the Red Cross with Nick, but this time we brought 1000 feet of CAT5, a hundred RJ-45 ends, a crimper tool and other tools. That was really appreciated, and we did more phone work that morning. In the afternoon, it was radio duty, passing messages between the EOC, the Red Cross, and people in the field at an emergency medical clinic. I also learned a lot about the infrastructure at our local Red Cross office - how the phone system works, how to reboot it if it hangs up, how to check the generator fuel level, where to get more fuel, etc. This is normally all done by one very capable guy at their office, and it was great to be able to take some load off of him. People with tech skills have value in a disaster zone. Saturday another Red Cross volunteer showed me papers that landed in her front yard falling from a clear sky on Wednesday from businesses more than 70 miles away. Sunday, I took Nick to work at the field radio station at the Baptist Church that's being used for field volunteer in-processing, and went back to the Red Cross to work radio duty. That operation is being run by VOAD - Volunteer Organizations Active in Disasters. Nick joined me in the afternoon after the morning shift at the church. VOAD processed (I think) almost a thousand volunteers during the time he was there, and he was helping provide communications with those field crews. All traffic lights are out due to the lack of power, so each day travel has been slow, with each traffic light a four-way stop. There has been limited traffic, but there has been power (and gasoline and groceries) available both 27 miles to the south of us and around 30 miles north for those who needed it. On Sunday I was able to fill up my van from a special disaster distribution center that was set up, which saved me waiting through the very long lines at the stations which were open. As of Sunday morning, all the hospitals, water and wastewater treatment plants, and a main corridor with gas stations and grocery stores had power - about 4% of the county. That power was coming from the nearest hydroelectric generation plant at Guntersville dam. By the end of the day, pwoer had been restored to many more areas. I was really hopeful as I was driving home last night power was on in my area - but it stopped about 1/2 mile from my house. But a couple of hours later, we got power, followed shortly after by cable and internet. A lot of the area is still without power, and they have halted turning on more areas until they have more capacity: http://blog.al.com/breaking/2011/05/no_indication_when_tva_will_ad.html#cmpid=v2mode_be_smoref_face Each day, it's been work from around 8 AM until 6PM, then a cold shower and pass out. The last two days, there have been more than 100 individual amateur radio operators either in the operations centers (like me and Nick) or out in the field. It's been amazing to see the capability that they provide. During the whole disaster, the response of the Emergency Management Agency here has been amazingly professional and prompt. I can't imagine what it's like in the areas with more damage and a less developed emergency response community. Our local ARES/RACES team has a long history of cooperation and close work with the EMA, and it showed. Today (Monday) was an off day for me, and I had thought that I would not be called back for more work. I needed to get the house in order, hug my wife and kids some more, do some critical laundry and make a grocery run (everything in the frig was cooked or thrown out a couple of days ago). I was expecting to be back at work at Canonical tomorrow. But - I've been called back in to the Red Cross tomorrow. As operations shift to cleanup, there has been less radio traffic for the EOC and more for the Red Cross operations and field crews. I'm pretty sure that tomorrow afternoon, we'll shift Net Control Operations from the EOC to the Red Cross station, and I'll be helping with that - my brother Jason (N2NLY) will also be there. Jason was in NYC for 9/11. We're a family presence at the Red Cross. The best thing for me after the health and safety of my family has been that I've been able to help. In organizations like the Red Cross, there's a definite spirit of Ubuntu, even for those who don't know the word. As I meet the people working in logistics, mass care, disaster assessment, etc - they have been very thankful to have a geek there. Disaster response depends on radio, telephone, and networking. Very quickly, the most valuable things to me in preparation for this are lots of training and drills with the people I work with, the EmComm training courses I took from ARRL, and experience working pileups on HF. If you listen to the busy times we had on the audio from that day, you'll see why. Thanks, Steve Conklin AI4QR
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