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Role of Amateur Radio in Disasters
In order to examine the role of amateur radio in support of disaster management, below is a brief review of some the large-scale disasters that have occurred in California.
Loma Prieta Earthquake, Santa Cruz, California, October 17, 1989
In the Loma Prieta (Santa Cruz) earthquake, there were 63 people killed and 3,757 injured. 1,018 homes were destroyed and 23,408 damaged while 3,530 businesses were damaged. Property damaged was estimated about $5.9 billion.
The principal cities in Santa Cruz County are Santa Cruz and Watsonville. The quake's epicenter was only eight miles from Santa Cruz. Landslides, damaged roads and bridges closed most highways and rural roads. The county was isolated with no electric power and no telephone service. 592 homes and 668 mobile homes had been destroyed, 2,069 had suffered heavy damage and 10,000 people were displaced from their homes. (Two months later, 3,000 remained homeless.)
Santa Cruz ARES members were quick to provide emergency communications. QST, March 1990, printed some first-person accounts of ham activities, which provided a vivid picture of the events of October 17. Radio amateurs provided the initial communications between the county Emergency Operations Center (EOC) and hospitals, Red Cross shelters, and the State Office of Emergency Services in Sacramento. The Watsonville Community Hospital had been severely damaged after being displaced about a foot, which broke many pipes. The emergency power generator had been damaged and there was no telephone service. Critical-care patients had to be evacuated from the third and fourth floors of the building. Hams assisted in communicating requests for ambulances to move patients to the other two county hospitals and to hospitals in Monterey County. Medical helicopters from Stanford Medical Center and from Fort Ord were unable to establish radio communication with the hospitals for landing clearance. Radio amateurs relayed landing instructions to the helicopters through their home bases. An amateur brought a portable generator to power lights for emergency surgery.
Amateur radio operators were able to help by reporting many gas leaks as well as broken sewer and water lines. Amateur radio was also used to assist in coordinating arrival of structural engineers brought from other parts of California. Amateur radio was used to provide communications for about a dozen Red Cross emergency shelters for a week. Many of these locations required 24-hour coverage, and some needed two operators. About 370 amateur radio operators were involved in providing emergency communications after this earthquake.
Oakland/Berkeley Fire, October 20-23, 1991
In the Oakland/Berkeley East Bay Hills fire there were 25 people killed and 150 injured. There were 3,471 houses destroyed, and 1,600 acres burned, despite the efforts of 350 fire engines. This was the largest single urban fire disaster in the history of the United States. It was 100 time bigger than the great Chicago fire of 1871. This fire illustrates some of the problems, which resulted from poor land-use policies.
Some of the problems of the Oakland/Berkeley fire were: the fire ignited 790 homes in first hour; there was a hilly urban/wildland interface; there was no time to prepare for an orderly evacuation; narrow streets and abandoned automobiles made it difficult for fire engines to get to areas and for the police cars to evacuate residents; the Fire and Police Departments did not use the Incident Command System and had not practiced using the Mutual Aid System; there were equipment and organizational problems with communications; there were problems with low water pressure and non-standard hydrants; wood shake roofs were not treated with fire retardant chemicals; and the fire spread to adjacent houses because of lack of proper weed and brush abatement policies.
QST had an article, "Hams Put to Test in Huge Oakland Fire - Amateur Radio Played a Key Role in the Fight Against the Worst Fire in US History" in the February 1992 issue. The article reported that Hams began to gather on UHF and VHF nets almost immediately after the fire started and people saw the smoke. Many of those on the nets were RACES- and ARES-trained volunteers. However, the fire was so overwhelming that in the resulting confusion it was more than five hours before amateur radio emergency volunteers were called to action in Alameda County to assist in providing communications with the Oakland Fire Department.
The Oakland Fire Department had only four channel radios, which caused difficulties in communicating with the 350 fire engines brought to Oakland for mutual aid assignments. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention (CDF) mobilized 70 amateur radio operators who had been trained in a CDF program called "Volunteer in Prevention". These hams are communication "shadows" for CDF fire officers, (Rich, 1991). The State Office of Emergency Services' Regional Emergency Operations Center had amateur radio operators assisting in its radio room. The hams provided communications for support of the Red Cross shelters in Oakland around the clock for a week.
Participating organizations and ham clubs included: Livermore RACES, East Bay ARES, East Bay Amateur Radio Club, South Bay Amateur Radio Club, Marin County Amateur Radio Club, North Bay Amateur Radio Club, Mount Diablo Amateur Radio Club, Reno Amateur Radio Club, River City Amateur Radio Club, N6ICW Telephone Pioneer Radio Club, and Contra Costa Repeaters.
Northridge, California Earthquake, January 17, 1994
The most expensive disaster in the United States was the earthquake in the Los Angeles area in January 1994. In the Northridge (Los Angeles) earthquake, there were 57 people killed, 1,566 hospitalized, and 9,158 injured. There were more than 2000 houses destroyed, 32,000 apartment units damaged, and more than 6,000 mobile homes damaged. Property damage was estimated to be about $20 Billion.
The damage was inflicted over a wide area in Los Angeles and Ventura counties. It was fortunate that so few people were killed considering that so many People were injured and so many apartments, houses, and mobile homes were damaged. The American Red Cross quickly established about 40 shelters to house the earthquake victims. However, initially only about 5,000 people registered to stay at the Red Cross shelters which were mostly school buildings, while over 20,000 others, mostly Mexican, were sleeping in public parks in makeshift tents. The damage to the Los Angeles freeway system caused tremendous problems. It was estimated that more than 300,000 cars a day used the Santa Monica freeway before the earthquake. Since Californians in the Lx~ Angeles area do not have mass transit yet, their automobiles and freeways are unbelievably important to them. The mutual aid system brought many firefighters and police to help respond to the quake. Specialized Federal urban search & rescue teams were flown to Los Angeles to help rescue people trapped by collapse of buildings and parking garages. Federal emergency medical teams with portable hospitals arrived, since a number of hospitals in the area not only could not provide medical attention for the thousands of injured residents, but had to have their own patients evacuated elsewhere because of damage to their buildings.
A report in QST gave some personal accounts of ham heroics following the Los Angeles earthquake, (Palm, 1994). The San Fernando Section Emergency Coordinator activated the ARES emergency communications van at the San Fernando hospital for communications with area hospitals. The Los Angeles Section had more than 100 hams volunteer for communication services. Another ham checked in with the Southern California DX Club repeater and was able to relay a report to the Sheriff's disaster net that a high-pressure gas main had ruptured on Mulholland Drive. During the first two days he had to use his own emergency power generator since there was no electricity in the San Fernando Valley. Using 20 meters, he was able to relay about 300 messages before telephone service was restored to the 818 area.
Seventy ARES operators checked in by radio with Ventura's ARRL Emergency Coordinator after the 4:31 AM earthquake. Most of them were assigned to provide communications for Red Cross shelters. There were more than 4000 messages forwarded into the San Fernando and Santa Clarita Valleys by amateur packet radio.
A ham in Arkansas tuned in to 14.245 MHZ after he heard about the earthquake on the news and found someone in Washington State acting as net control. The band was fading so that he ended up as net control and handled 517 messages before turning the net over to someone else. |