Whether you’re hit by a natural disaster or power outage, you can expect this problem: your cell phones, landline phones and Internet eventually stop working. What will you do? How will you communicate with your family or friends? While you may have set aside food and water for an emergency, what about a pair of radios with batteries? Have you considered long-range options? Do you know what your best options are? Our Club W5HSV (Hot Springs Village Arkansas) will help walk you through modern communications technologies, pros and cons of each, and recommendations to implement a realistic backup communications system. Amateur Radio - the King of Emergency Communications Using the clear and simple recommendations, you’ll be able to reliably communicate with others in your region, without a cell phone, landline service, Internet, or need for grid power. When others can only wonder if their loved ones are safe, you will be able to talk with yours! “One area often overlooked in disaster preparedness is the need for communication. Whether it is to let distant loved ones know that all is well, signal for help from a stranded vehicle, or call for emergency medical assistance, the ability to reach out when conventional services have failed is crucial.
Short-term emergencies have shown the limitations of using cell phones to coordinate with each other. Even if the towers are operational, they can’t handle the added traffic of millions of people trying to get a hold of loved ones – or help. Ever had trouble calling your mother on the morning of Mother’s Day?
During many recent events, cell phone service wasn’t an option for many for days. The system became seriously overloaded on 9/11 so calls wouldn’t go through, 70% of the towers went down during Katrina and were down for days, and most areas haven’t been adequately improved across the US. With crossband radios like Wouxun KG UV8D, ham radio towers can be back on the air in hours instead of days.
These won’t be isolated events. Don’t think that because you live in a large metropolitan area that you’re safer. A quick look at some of the things that went on during Hurricane Sandy in NY will show that the government has a lot to deal with in addition to just trying to get your cell phone service back up so even though that was a pretty short-term event, it caused a lot of problems.
Amateur radio (ham radio): the best emergency communication system
So now that we’ve gone through several options that you could choose, but obviously from the title I don’t recommend, let’s look at ham radio.
Ham radio is the go-to communication system for pretty much every emergency response system and is what MARS (the Military Auxiliary Radio System) and ARES (Amateur Radio Emergency Service) both use, as well as many search and rescue and other emergency groups.
One of the nice things is that a lot of ham radios can reach the national weather system (NOAA) frequencies. That means that if you have a radio, you can find out what’s going on in the area. If you have a radio scanner, you can listen to what’s going on with emergency frequencies as well as any other that the scanner can reach, and you don’t have to know which one they’re transmitting on. That’s why they call it a scanner. It goes in a loop up through whatever frequencies you tell it to and it stops if it hears someone transmitting.
Here is a list of emergency radio frequencies that you should keep in mind when both looking for radios and coming up with your emergency communications plan. Just to pacify all the know-it-alls who keep telling me this list is worthless because you can’t transmit on them – keep in mind that they’re useful to monitor in emergencies even if you can’t send anything out, so here is a fairly complete list:
34.90: Used nationwide by the National Guard during emergencies.
39.46: Used for inter-department emergency communications by local and state police forces.
47.42: Used across the United States by the Red Cross for relief operations.
52.525: Calling frequency used by ham radio operators in FM on their six-meter band.
121.50: International aeronautical emergency frequency.
138.225: Disaster relief operations channel used by the Federal Emergency Management Agency; it is active during earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, and other catastrophic events.
146.52: Used by ham radio operators for non-repeater communications on the two-meter band; it is very busy in many parts of the country.
151.625: Used by “itinerant” businesses, or those that travel about the country. Circuses, exhibitions, trade shows, and sports teams are some of the users you can hear. Other widely used itinerant channels are 154.57 and 154.60.
154.28: Used for inter-department emergency communications by local fire departments; 154.265 and 154.295 also used.
155.160: Used for inter-department emergency communications by local and state agencies during search and rescue operations.
155.475: Used for inter-department emergency communications by local and state police forces.
156.75: Used internationally for broadcasts of maritime weather alerts.
156.80: International maritime distress, calling, and safety channel. All ships must monitor this frequency while at sea. It is also heavily used on rivers, lakes, etc.
162.40: NOAA weather broadcasts and bulletins.
162.425: NOAA weather broadcasts and bulletins.
162.45: NOAA weather broadcasts and bulletins.
162.475: NOAA weather broadcasts and bulletins.
162.50: NOAA weather broadcasts and bulletins.
162.525: NOAA weather broadcasts and bulletins.
162.55: NOAA weather broadcasts and bulletins.
163.275: NOAA weather broadcasts and bulletins.
163.4875: Used nationwide by the National Guard during emergencies.
So now that we’ve gone through several options that you could choose, but obviously from the title I don’t recommend, let’s look at ham radio.
Ham radio is the go-to communication system for pretty much every emergency response system and is what MARS (the Military Auxiliary Radio System) and ARES (Amateur Radio Emergency Service) both use, as well as many search and rescue and other emergency groups.
One of the nice things is that a lot of ham radios can reach the national weather system (NOAA) frequencies. That means that if you have a radio, you can find out what’s going on in the area. If you have a radio scanner, you can listen to what’s going on with emergency frequencies as well as any other that the scanner can reach, and you don’t have to know which one they’re transmitting on. That’s why they call it a scanner. It goes in a loop up through whatever frequencies you tell it to and it stops if it hears someone transmitting.
Here is a list of emergency radio frequencies that you should keep in mind when both looking for radios and coming up with your emergency communications plan. Just to pacify all the know-it-alls who keep telling me this list is worthless because you can’t transmit on them – keep in mind that they’re useful to monitor in emergencies even if you can’t send anything out, so here is a fairly complete list:
34.90: Used nationwide by the National Guard during emergencies.
39.46: Used for inter-department emergency communications by local and state police forces.
47.42: Used across the United States by the Red Cross for relief operations.
52.525: Calling frequency used by ham radio operators in FM on their six-meter band.
121.50: International aeronautical emergency frequency.
138.225: Disaster relief operations channel used by the Federal Emergency Management Agency; it is active during earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, and other catastrophic events.
146.52: Used by ham radio operators for non-repeater communications on the two-meter band; it is very busy in many parts of the country.
151.625: Used by “itinerant” businesses, or those that travel about the country. Circuses, exhibitions, trade shows, and sports teams are some of the users you can hear. Other widely used itinerant channels are 154.57 and 154.60.
154.28: Used for inter-department emergency communications by local fire departments; 154.265 and 154.295 also used.
155.160: Used for inter-department emergency communications by local and state agencies during search and rescue operations.
155.475: Used for inter-department emergency communications by local and state police forces.
156.75: Used internationally for broadcasts of maritime weather alerts.
156.80: International maritime distress, calling, and safety channel. All ships must monitor this frequency while at sea. It is also heavily used on rivers, lakes, etc.
162.40: NOAA weather broadcasts and bulletins.
162.425: NOAA weather broadcasts and bulletins.
162.45: NOAA weather broadcasts and bulletins.
162.475: NOAA weather broadcasts and bulletins.
162.50: NOAA weather broadcasts and bulletins.
162.525: NOAA weather broadcasts and bulletins.
162.55: NOAA weather broadcasts and bulletins.
163.275: NOAA weather broadcasts and bulletins.
163.4875: Used nationwide by the National Guard during emergencies.