On 11/3/2014 5:25 PM, David Platt wrote:
[A bit late in chiming in here, but it took a while to locate the
document I was hoping for.]
And a big thank you for doing so.
We had a vaguely similar incident here back in 2009, when some
effectively-targeted vandalism knocked out almost all phone service in
large parts of several counties in my area, during the wee hours of
4/9/2009. Land-line and cell calls were both affected, including
almost all 9-1-1 service. It took most of the day to restore a
substantial amount of the disrupted service.
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/articl...ce-3245380.php
Fortunately nobody died (as far as I know) as a result of being [not ]
able to call 9-1-1 for medical or fire or police emergencies. It could
easily have been otherwise.
Ham-radio responders were activated by the city and county RACES
organizations, to provide liason communication between public safety
organizations and hospitals, and to serve as points of contact for the
public in case of emergencies.
It was a good experience in most regards for the hams. Fortunately,
we didn't encounter any actual life-threatening incidents which
required our services in the moment.
So it took roughly 5 hours for the Amateurs to respond after the initial
incident? And you got a total of 43 people.
I asked our DEC whether he had any sort of post-incident report in his
files, and he did... and has given me the OK to post it for anyone
interested:
http://www.radagast.org/~dplatt/hamr...tionReport.pdf
An excellent report.
In our county, we're signed up as California Disaster Service
Workers... so, when formally activated, we become (in effect) unpaid
employees of the activating government body (city or county), covered
under Workman's Compensation for injuries, and protected by some
limited liability coverage.
These protections would *not* apply to us (or anyone else including
random ham volunteers) who just "jump in" on our own initiative.
Although I have to wonder if the people in charge are fully aware of
their lack of liability in calling us. And if they would tend to
ignore us in the effort of "playing it safe."
--
Jeff-1.0
wa6fwi
http://www.foxsmercantile.com