TO: ALL WOOD COUNTY EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS AMATEURS
ALL NON-WOOD COUNTY EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS AMATERUS
FROM: KEN HARRIS WA8LLM
WOOD COUNTY EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS INCORPORATED
WOOD COUNTY BULLETIN NR 11.40 DATE: October 2, 2011
SUBJECT: STAY IN PRACTICE
Even though it looks like emergency communications is not being needed, you should keep your communication skills tuned up. The day will come, when you least expect it, and emergency communications will be needed.
It doesn't have to be a war or a terrorist attack when primary communications can be disabled, or disrupted completely. There are a number of other natural and manmade events that can disrupt communications. In the last several years alone there have been events that have disrupted telephone communications in different areas less than 100 miles from Wood County.
To name a few events that disrupted communications is the snow storm of 1994 which downed many trees, breaking Fiber Optic cables from Parkersburg to Clarkburg, and isolating Ritchie County from the rest of the world. During the same snow storm, it caused the commercial power to go off in the Rockport area. The backup batteries went dead in the telephone office because no one was able to get there with a generator to keep them charged, and all of the Rockport area telephones were disabled.
There was a tree that just fell one time, no storm involved, that broke a Fiber Optic cable just South of Lubeck, knocking out the E-911 service in Ripley, and isolating Jackson county from the rest of the world. At the same time it knocked out telephone communications between Ripley and Ravenswood, both in Jackson County.
There was a train derailment just South of Point Pleasant, tearing down telephone poles, breaking the Fiber Optic cables, and isolating the city of Henderson from the rest of the world. There was the severe storm that went through Ritchie County causing the commercial power to go off and one battery in the Harrisville telephone office was bad, causing all telephone service to be lost in over half of the county.
How about the time the Special Signaling equipment in Columbus, Ohio, went down and telephone communications, both local and long distance, were lost in the Eastern counties of Ohio. As you can see, normal telephone communications can be disrupted somewhere else, and your local communications can be affected. These are just a few reasons that we need to keep our communication abilities fine-tuned and ready to be called upon.
Ken Harris WA8LLM
WCEC
Wood County WV