TO: ALL WOOD COUNTY ARES MEMBERS (OFFICIAL)
ALL ARES AND NON-ARES AMATEURS ANYWHERE (INFORMATION)
FROM: KEN HARRIS WA8LLM ARRL DISTRICT 3
EMERGENCY COORDINATOR WOOD COUNTY EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS INC.
WOOD COUNTY ARES BULLETIN NR 18.26 DATE: July 1, 2018
SUBJECT: STAY IN PRACTICE
Even though it looks like emergency communications is very seldom used or needed, you should keep your communication skills tuned up. The day will come, when you least expect it, 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 or manmade events that can disrupt communications. In the last twenty five years alone there have been several events that have disrupted communications in different areas less then 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 Clarksburg, 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 telephone were disabled. There was a tree that just fell, for no apparent reason and 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, as well as knocking out telephone communications between Ripley and Ravenswood, both in Jackson County.
There have been train derailments 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