By Pauline Masson –
At about 2:30 a.m., one rainy morning, Keith Wilson, St. Clair was jolted awake by a phone call, often a signal of bad news at that time of night. A family friend, watching TV news of a severe storm, was checking to see if Wilson and his family were okay.
“There’s an awful lot of rain out there,” the friend said.
A ham radio operator, who served as the radio amateur civilian emergency service (RACES) officer for Franklin County, Wilson dressed and headed for the Emergency Operations Center EOC in Union.
At almost the same time in Beaufort, another ham, the late Bob Goza, a chronic night owl who was still awake, was also watching storm reports on TV. As a precaution, he drove to a nearby creek that almost never overran the road. He didn’t make it all the way. The road was completely under water.
Wilson and Goza began to call and wake up fellow hams, all seasoned storm spotters, who went out in the deluge to assess roads and creeks near their locations and relay conditions to the EOC.
Dubbed a freak winter storm by the National Weather Service, 14 inches of rain dropped over portions of Franklin County in four hours. By 9:00 a.m. all major highways (I-44, 50, 100, 30, 185, and 47) and 43 County roads were under water or washed out in places.
With information provided by the hams, first responders were able to prevent early morning commuters from driving into moving water and guide them to roads that were open. The storm had wreaked havoc in the County. Two people lost their lives, 30 were injured and hospitalized and hundreds of home were severely damaged.
For ten days following the storm area hams manned a ham station at the EOC. As Red Cross volunteers arrived to deliver needed water, food and medical supplies to flood victims, a ham was assigned to each vehicle to direct Red Cross volunteers to damaged areas and maintain contact with the EOC in case of any medical emergency.
As it turned out, response to the freak storm was the first real test of a new Franklin County emergency response system.
Only months earlier, EOC director Jerry Goff, Franklin County Commissioner Gene Scott, Franklin County 911 director Lt. Eileen Stapp and RACES officer Wilson had overseen installation of a unique arsenal of communication equipment at the new EOC center that would arm the County to respond to a disaster of any kind.
It was May, 2000.
A major disaster of that scope doesn’t happen very often. But when it does happen, when cell towers and land lines are knocked out or overloaded by any catastrophe, hams rush to the site to provide communication within the disaster area and with the outside world.
This always reliable emergency communication service does not cost isolated citizens or government agencies anything. Amateur radio operators (hams) are prohibited from charging for their service.
At a moments notice, individual hams take their hand carried go boxes containing radio, batteries and antenna and within a few hours they can rig portable antennas, and start contacting hams outside the disaster area.
To be ready to do that, hams purchase and maintain their own equipment. And, like tap dancers wanting to get to Carnegie Hall, they practice, practice, practice.
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Last week, hams from three East Central Missouri amateur radio clubs – Washington based Zero Beaters, Pacific and Sullivan – spent the weekend at Zero Beaters clubhouse, the old Indian Prairie School near Union, to man their personal equipment, share ideas on new techniques and gadgets, and practice contacting hams in far away locations.
Dubbed a Fall Rendezvous, Jim Rhodes, Pacific Meramec Valley Amateur Radio Club president, Greg Ballard, Zero Beaters Amateur Radio Club president, and Bill Higgins, Sullivan Amateur Radio Club president spent three months planning the event. The three clubs jointly hosted the two-day gathering.
“Our mission was to bring the three clubs together for ham fellowship,” Rhodes said. “The practice session was just a natural activity when all those hams get together.”
“We had over 30 people there over the weekend and 29 there for dinner on Saturday. We logged in 360 QSOs (contacts) under non-calling for the event. We reached 39 states and 36 countries, including Australia, Russia and Israel.” It went so well, we’d like to make it an annual event.”
The non-calling reference means that hams in the practice session sent out the message “CQ CQ CQ,” a general call for anyone listening – not the every day call out of one ham calling another ham. This is the procedure used in emergency events where hams are alerting the entire ham population of the need for their help.
In the arcane world of amateur radio, constantly evolving equipment, FCC regulated radio frequencies, and federal ham licenses enable hams to send and receive voice, Morse Code and now computer message over the constant radio waves that circle the globe.
Nothing brings it all together like an emergency, such as the 2000 Franklin County storm, 9/11 or Hurrcane Katrina when hams from near and far, with a disparate collection of equipment and a wide range of skills, come together for a specific communication need. They work together, shoulder to shoulder, to establish communication between first responders and government centers, between disaster aid agencies and victims and between victims and family members outside the disaster area.
The recent rendezvous was a combination of ham fellowship and equipment drills that would take to the air in a real emergency. Rhodes said the Zero Beaters clubhouse was chosen for the event because it was the ideal setting for the regional ham community to come together. Banks of radios, donated by club members through the years, line the side walls and are available for club members to use. A 50-foot tower holds an array of antenna that reach a range radio frequencies. And the grounds provided space for hams to camp overnight.
For the 757,500 amateur radio operators in the United States, (15,178 in Missouri / 137 in the 3 area clubs) – capturing the air waves on radios, antenna and computers, ham radio is a hobby with a purpose.
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IN THE INTEREST OF FULL DISCLOSURE – I should say that I’m a ham radio operator general class with the call sign WØPIK, which can be misleading because I am not in the same skill level with the tech savvy hams in the three local clubs. I studied for two months to take the general class test to apply for the call sign of my pal the late Carl Zitzman. Carl became a ham at age 12 in Pacific when a forward thinking Boy Scout leader insisted that the boys learn Morse Code. Carl’s ham license landed him a unique deployment in WWII. Through much of the War, he was stationed, alone with one assistant, on a series of forward islands in the Pacific Ocean, ahead of advancing forces. His role was to send radio messages to the pilots headed for battle sites. They couldn’t answer because their signal could be intercepted to give away their positions.
