What is amateur radio as an emergency response?

Foundations of Amateur Radio

I recently discussed some of the notions of amateur radio as emergency response. The idea that you might jump into the breach and be a hero is appealing and often celebrated.

The American Radio Relay League, or ARRL, proudly tells the story of two amateur radio emergency communication events. One, of a person who fell in their bathroom and happened to have a handheld radio that they used to contact another amateur who contacted emergency services. The story goes on to say that being part of the Amateur Radio Emergency Services or ARES had taught the amateurs the ITU phonetic alphabet, as-if that's not a requirement for getting your amateur license. Then there's the story of two teenagers who were critically injured in a remote area and amateur radio rescued them due to a contact with a random local amateur. Never mind that there was a local off-duty EMT who actually stabilised the patients.

While you might point at this as "amateur radio to the rescue", to me this is a case of people attempting to make the story about amateur radio. If the person in the bathroom happened to have a mobile phone nearby, the story would not have even made the nightly news and if the people in the remote area had actually prepared properly, they'd have had an emergency position-indicating radiobeacon or EPIRB and a satellite phone, rather than accidentally bumping into a random radio amateur.

Moving on. Have you ever noticed that your mobile phone stops working after a couple of hours during a power outage? It's because mobile phone towers run on batteries that depending on load might last up to 12 hours, often much less than that, anywhere from down when the power goes out to 3 hours until the batteries fail. Note that I'm not talking about the battery in your phone, I'm talking about the ones in the tower serving your phone.

I mentioned previously that there was a network outage affecting 40% of the Australian population. The get-out-of jail card was that the rest of the population still had mobile, landline and internet connectivity. What would happen if the other network operator also went down?

Is there a place for amateur radio in those scenarios?

Let's explore. If all mobile, telephone and internet networks were down, what would that look like? Could you call an ambulance or the fire department using amateur radio? Who would you talk to, on what frequency and on which radio would they be listening? Would you set up your portable shack in the local hospital or fire station? Would ambulances and fire services be able to coordinate during such an outage, or would you have your local amateur club ride-along on every ambulance and fire truck?

What does such a system look like in actuality? Has there been any planning or training for this? Are there refresher courses and special certifications? Does your local community have anything like this in place, or are you starting from scratch?

During widespread and long lasting fire emergencies in Australia, radio amateurs have acted as emergency services radio operators. There is at least one amateur club where, years ago, the members underwent special training with the local State Emergency Services to learn their language and procedures, just in case it becomes short staffed when an actual emergency occurs.

I've often said that doing contests is a good way to learn how best to operate your station and how to work in adverse environments with lots of interference, man-made or otherwise. The reality is that it's more likely than not that you'll be using a line-of-sight FM radio in the emergency services communications bunker than sitting in the rubble of your shack using HF with a wire antenna running off battery trying to get someone, anyone, to help you and your community.

There are official amateur radio emergency organisations, WICEN in Australia, ARES and RACES in the United States. Much is made by these organisations about joining and training, but very little in the way of actual emergency response. Is that a marketing issue, or are these types of organisations obsolete and waiting to be disbanded?

My point is this.

If amateur radio is really a service as the WIA states, "A Trusted Partner in Emergency Response", or as the ARRL puts it, "When All Else Fails", even making that a registered trademark, where is the evidence of their activity, where are the annual reports, the after action lessons learnt, the inter-team competitions, the talks at local clubs, the league tables of emergencies handled, lives saved and babies born?

To give you insight into just how broken this is, any licensed amateur can become a member of ARES, but you can only read their newsletter if you're a member of the ARRL. In Australia, for a while, the WIA offered a course for Public Safety Training for Radio Amateurs, but only to amateurs with an Advanced license, which I discovered after spending $633.92 to print out, collate and bind the 973 pages of course material, as-if those of a lesser amateur radio qualification somehow were less able to read a map, operate communications equipment, follow defined occupational health and safety policies and procedures, work effectively in a public safety organisation, as part of a team, or in an emergency operations centre.

So, what's your plan for providing amateur radio as a service?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB