1. Food & Water in grab & go kit. Smartphone or Google calendar to send you reminders to rotate it. Granola bars are one of the best long term foods to put in your grab and go radio kit.
ERC-ARES-MARA-CERT - which one do you work with? Most of us belong to one group, some to two groups. In an actual widespread disaster, you might wind up working with or interfacing with all four. Don't limit your usefulness by assuming you will only work with your "favorite" group.
2. Cheat sheets for your radios. During an emergency, repeaters will
be brought up on frequencies that you do not normally talk on except on
simplex. Most of these will also have a squelch tone required for
access. You must be able to enter a NEW frequency and TONE pair into
your radio on short notice. You can buy cheat sheets (QST, eBay, etc)
or you can build your own. They are just handy, they are ESSENTIAL! I guarantee you, speaking as the voice of experience, that without a cheat sheet you will find yourself isolated in an actual disaster if you cannot get your radio into and out of some modes that you normally NEVER use. The two most valuable in a disaster are Cross Band Repeat and New Repeater with Tone.
3. CERT and Ham Radio - The Department of Homeland Security lists ham radio as a key communications component of any major disaster or disruption. See the following articles for more information and how we can help in these areas. January QST page 85 - Beyond our bands. QST Aug
2012 pg 70 - QST Nov 2012 pg 89-90 Public Safety Moves Toward 22nd
Century Communications
4. 29 % of Americans have not prepared at all and over 60 percent expect to rely on emergency responders in the first 72 hours. That's not going to happen in any large or extreme disaster. These statistics tell us that, on average, 89% of those around us will be unprepared and will have no idea what to do or how to do it.
Lets look back at the 1974 power failure in the 13 western states - our stake had been doing
emergency preparedness seminars for some time. I was amazed at the
number of people in our area who were totally unprepared. Most did not
even own a candle or matches to light it with. We gave out candles and
matches up and down our street. We used our battery powered radio to
monitor emergency traffic on the commercial AM bands. Emergency
preparedness is still being taught in our area and I suspect that most neighborhoods are
not much more prepared now than they were in 1974.
We live and breath Emergency Preparedness. Most of our neighbors do not even know it exists. You have just two choices: 1) Educate them on Emergency Preparedness or 2) take care of them during a disaster.
I prefer #1. It is easy to organize an emergency group for your street. Get it going, but let somebody else be in charge. You will be busy doing radio stuff in the actual disaster and will likely not be around to marshall the group. Weekly or monthly printed handouts with lots of internet links will keep them informed and involved. Consider quarterly in-person meetings to check on progress.
You might be surprised to find that some of the non-members in your area have already started a group. Link up with them and make them aware of the role that Ham Radio will play.
Until next time - 73 from N7OZH
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