“Who ya’ gonna call?
Shiawassee County's Radio Hams!”
Public Demo of Emergency
Communications June 28-29
Owosso, MI 10 June, 2014 – Despite
the Internet, cell phones, email and modern communications, every
year whole regions find themselves in the dark. Tornadoes, fires,
storms, ice and even the occasional cutting of fiber optic cables
leave people without the means to communicate. In these cases, the
one consistent service that has never failed has been Amateur Radio.
These radio operators, often called “hams” provide backup
communications for everything from the American Red Cross to FEMA and
even for the International Space Station. Your Town’s “hams”
will join with thousands of other Amateur Radio operators showing
their emergency capabilities this weekend.
Over the past year, the news has been
full of reports of ham radio operators providing critical
communications during unexpected emergencies in towns across America
including the California wildfires, winter storms, tornadoes and
other events world-wide. When trouble is brewing, Amateur Radio’s
people are often the first to provide rescuers with critical
information and communications. On the weekend of June 28-29, the
public will have a chance to meet and talk with Shiawassee County’s
ham radio operators and see for themselves what the Amateur Radio
Service is about as hams across the USA will be holding public
demonstrations of emergency communications abilities.
This annual event, called "Field
Day" is the climax of the week long "Amateur Radio Week"
sponsored by the ARRL, the national association
for Amateur Radio. Using only emergency power supplies, ham operators will construct emergency
stations in parks, shopping malls, schools and backyards around the country. Their slogan, "When All
Else Fails, Ham Radio Works” is more than just words to the hams as they prove they can send messages in
many forms without the use of phone systems, Internet or any other
infrastructure that can be compromised in a crisis. More than 35,000
amateur radio operators across the country participated in last
year's event.
"The fastest way to turn a crisis
into a total disaster is to lose communications,” said Allen Pitts
of the ARRL. “From the earthquake and tsunami
in Japan to tornadoes in Missouri, ham radio provided the most reliable communication networks in
the first critical hours of the events. Because ham radios are not
dependent on the Internet, cell towers or other infrastructure, they
work when nothing else is available. We need nothing between us but
air.”
In the Shiawassee County area, the
Shiawassee Amateur Radio Association (S.A.R.A.) will be demonstrating
Amateur Radio at the Shiawassee County Fairgrounds on June 28 and 29.
They invite the public to come and see ham radio’s new capabilities
and learn how to get their own FCC radio license before the next
disaster strikes.
Amateur Radio is growing in the US.
There are now over 700,000 Amateur Radio licensees in the US, and more than 2.5 million around the
world. Through the ARRL’s Amateur Radio Emergency Services program, ham volunteers provide both
emergency communications for thousands of state and local emergency response agencies and
non-emergency community services too, all for free.
To learn more about Amateur Radio, go to
www.emergency-radio.org. The public is most cordially invited to come, meet and talk with the
hams. See what modern Amateur Radio can do. They can
even help you get on the air!
