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Are we getting too complicated?
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 |