In article , JJ
writes:

William wrote:

JJ wrote in message
...

William wrote:

You just cannot bring yourself to say that cellular telephones have
any use whatsoever in an emergency.

For handling official emergency traffic they are not of any use, that is
why the military and civil officials dismiss them completely from their
emergency planning. They do include ham radio.

Lemme see.

Emergency planners have cell phones tagged to their belts, right?

Sure they do, but in the case of a 9/11 emergency they would be hard
pressed to use them. Cell phone are great during the planning, but when
the real emergency comes, they become useless for emergency comms.

Not always true.

You want to select the 11 September 2001 Attack on America as
a typical emergency but that was a very UNtypical emergency
that no one could foresee or plan for. In the "9/11" incident ALL
methods of communications were strained.

There are NO verifiable stories about amateur radio doing anything
to aid anyone in the first few hours of the Attack in New York City
on 11 Sep 01. Conversely, even though the NYC Emergency
Center was almost destroyed in that Attack, police and fire
department personnel were in constant communications before and
immediately after the Attack in and around the World Trade Center.
Add to that the medical people, NYC officials, and various utilities
and other businesses who got into immediate action. All of that is
quite well documented in many and various media outside of
hobby groups.

Emergency planners don't have ham radio tagged to their belts, right?

If they are licensed hams they might have. Why would they if they were
not licensed? Face it billyboy, for the real comms needed in an
emergency situation, the cell network is not considered by emergency
officials to be of use, they do consider ham radio.

"Officials" who have already been through emergencies of many kinds
consider and plan for ANY kind of communications in ANY kind of
emergency or disaster situation.

A case in point is the "other" "9/11" Attack on the Pentagon in DC.
A year prior to the "9/11" Attack, the internal HVAC and utilities
communications and control system of that very large (horizontally)
structure were modified to allow selected sections to be isolated,
cut off from the main systems in order to minimize fire damage.
That system got a very real test on 11 Sep 01 and proved to be
good. Pentagon damage was confined to the immediate quintant
(?, one-fifth) with no spread beyond the aircraft crash point. After-
crash fire control and search and rescue was coordinated by on-
site military and civilian communications, not by amateur radio.

In the largely forgotten "fourth aircraft" incident on 11 Sep 04, we
have become familiar with the phrase "Let's [rock and] Roll!" that
was transmitted over a cellular telephone from the hijacked
airliner passenger cabin by a passenger. A stewardess' cell
phone call from that fourth hijacked plane has been recorded by
the media and played several times in broadcasts. Since the
hijackers had control of civil airways radios on that fourth plane,
the only available means of communications for the passengers
was by cell phone. Those calls got through. There are no viable
reports of amateur radio being used while that most definite
emergency situation was happening.

The "9/11" Attack is popular to espouse because of the enormous
emotional impact to all Americans. But, it was an ATTACK done
by other humans against all of us and definitely NOT some kind of
natural event emergency or disaster. The "kamikazi" nature of
this suicide attack was NOT anticipated by anyone and all were
in surprise and all had to work through the immediate aftermath
with whatever reseources were available.

"Radio" (as in two-way transceivers) doesn't exist in just cell phones
and ham rigs. There are - literally - hundreds of thousands of radios
existing now and in all the government and commercial infra-
structures. All of those hundreds of thousands of infrastructure
radios are available NOW and already networked. Those are and
will continue to be primary radio communications means in the real
emergencies that have been and are expected to happen in the
future. The secondary means are a mixture of infrastructure fall-
back planning and private-use radios, principally utility, business,
and other commercial radio services. Amateur radio is in the
tertiary level lumped in with CB, FRS, GMRS, and other private
radios...seldom organized to work with primary and secondary
levels and not depended upon as reliable for anything but health
and welfare (psychological reassurance) messaging for victims
after an emergency has occurred.

It does no good to express outrage and perceived insult the radios
in an essentially-recreational activity isn't venerated or rewarded
for exaggerated tales of heroism and good deeds. That only shows
an emotional instability that refuses to consider the vast infra-
structure of communications that exists and is robust enough to
have survived many disasters and emergencies of the past.

If cell phones work in some future emergency, they WILL be used.
There are just too many of them, the cell infrastructure too large to
overlook them. Public Service radios are already organized and
backed up, networked, planned, trained to work in emergency
conditions. Those will bear the brunt of future emergency
communications as they have successfully in the past. In the USA
there exist many and varied wired and fiber communications means,
locally to nationally...plus a variety of frequencies, modes, and
methods already in-place with the military and national guards
units, able to use equipment designed and proven to work through
the harshest of all enviornments: Warfare. Everything that can
work is useable and has been used, emergency planners and
coordinators already well aware of what is available and reliable.

This isn't the 1920s when "radio" was not widespread nor
technologically advanced, suitable only for some broadcasting
and on-off keying mode communications. This is 80 years later,
over three generations of time, and "radios" are numerous in the
governmental and commercial infrastructure. It would be best to
stop the self-perceived outrage at your hobby being slighted to
educate yourself on the entire world of "radio," what is there and
how it is being used and planned-for in real emergencies.

LHA / WMD