ubuntu-hams team mailing list archive

[Steve Conklin <sconklin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all!

I hope this might be interesting to some . . .  I'm sending it widely so
it's not too ham-detailed. I may get into more of that later.

Last Wednesday, Alabama was hit by the worst weather disaster in our
history, which set national records for tornadoes - greatest number,
longest number of miles tracked, and probably greatest number of
fatalities in a single day.

Some areas further south were completely devastated. A world-record
massive tornado tracked for a total of more than 430 miles from
Mississippi to North Carolina. The track can be seen from space in
satellite images.

Check out this blog post about it:
http://originalweatherblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/extensive-damage-in-tuscaloosa-al.html

My county was hit as well, with several neighborhoods destroyed. Our
number of fatalities was much lower, due to the differences in the
weather but also due in part I believe to the efforts of the storm
spotters that we have operating in this area. During the storm, I was
operating on amateur radio, most of the time in the role of "Net Control
Station", coordinating radio traffic between hams and the Emergency
operations center. My family and I had to take cover three times during
the day due to tornadoes tracking toward our house. Our county has a
population of about 300,000 people.

The area of greatest destruction in our county was in an area about 7
miles from my house. Photos of the destruction can be seen here:

http://photos.al.com/4462/gallery/aerial_view_of_the_north_alabama_tornado_damage_from_april_27_2011/index.html

Anderson Hills, Toney, Harvest, and Carter's Gin are all in that area
near me.

My wife Susan and I saw the tornado that struck there pass over our
house, with the rotation forming.

Toward the end of the day my fifteen year old son Nick (N1CKC) relieved
me on the radio, as I was exhausted. He did a great job. 

If you're interested in this sort of thing, the radio audio from that
day is here, but there's a big break in the middle from when we lost
power until later when I was on generator power and had a free second to
restart the streaming. I'm identified by my call sign AI4QR.

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/madscientistsclub

The entire area lost power during the event, due to damage to major
portions of the grid feeding us. The transmission lines to the Brown's
Ferry nuclear power plant (22 miles upwind of me) were severed, and the
plant made an emergency shutdown. The design is identical to the
Fukushima power plant.

That was Wednesday. Wednesday night, I continued to operate on
generator, and had all the network infrastructure in my house on the
generator. My Knology internet stayed up until I shut down the
generator, many hours after the power went out. It was dead the next
morning, as was my phone service. I was asked by the EOC to confirm
whether I could make HF contact with the state EOC and local Red Cross
station on 40m while on generator power, and checked in and made those
contacts. 

Incidentally, during the event I was streaming that audio, watching
weather radar, looking up locations on google maps, and looking up ham
radio call signs on the internet - all using 100% Ubuntu (Lucid). I was
also getting occasional help from Kamal (KA6MAL) in CA helping decipher
things that were hard to hear on the radio - he was listening to the
streaming audio.

Cell phone coverage was pretty bad right after the event. Calls would
not complete, but SMS messages usually did, depending on the carrier. By
far, Verizon customers have had the best service in the following days.
Most of the time and in most locations, I have still had a 3G connection
on my android.

On Thursday I secured the house, scoped some things out, set up the camp
stove and inventoried food and water, and prepared for the 5-7 days that
we were told we'd be without power. Not much happened on Thursday except
for ongoing search and rescue operations in the affected area.
Personally, my family was in good shape. We had plenty of food, camp
stoves, a generator with enough fuel for a couple of hours of operation
each day (which we used to charge cell phones and batteries for the
amateur radios). City water never stopped working for most of the area
including us, but we have filtration devices or camping and would have
been fine even if the water had stopped working. The county declared a
dusk-to-dawn curfew.

I'm a Red Cross volunteer for disaster relief, and on Friday I was asked
to report to the chapter house to help. The chapter house is more or
less the business office, not and end-point for distribution of
services. There's a radio room there where communications with the
county Emergency Operations Center (EOC) and field units are handled. My
son Nick is a Red Cross youth volunteer, and went with me. We were put
to work helping run extension phone lines, and extension cords to places
where they were needed in the building. The building was under generator
power, and not all areas had lighting or power outlets live. It turns
out that my most valuable skill that morning was being able to deal with
telephone and networking cabling. Nick and I spent most of the day
running cables, then on radio duty in the afternoon.

Saturday, I showed up again at the Red Cross with Nick, but this time we
brought 1000 feet of CAT5, a hundred RJ-45 ends, a crimper tool and
other tools.

That was really appreciated, and we did more phone work that morning.
In the afternoon, it was radio duty, passing messages between the EOC,
the Red Cross, and people in the field at an emergency medical clinic.
I also learned a lot about the infrastructure at our local Red Cross
office - how the phone system works, how to reboot it if it hangs up,
how to check the generator fuel level, where to get more fuel, etc. This
is normally all done by one very capable guy at their office, and it was
great to be able to take some load off of him. People with tech skills
have value in a disaster zone. 

Saturday another Red Cross volunteer showed me papers that landed in her
front yard falling from a clear sky on Wednesday from businesses more
than 70 miles away.

Sunday, I took Nick to work at the field radio station at the Baptist
Church that's being used for field volunteer in-processing, and went
back to the Red Cross to work radio duty. That operation is being run by
VOAD - Volunteer Organizations Active in Disasters. Nick joined me in
the afternoon after the morning shift at the church. VOAD processed (I
think) almost a thousand volunteers during the time he was there, and he
was helping provide communications with those field crews.

All traffic lights are out due to the lack of power, so each day travel
has been slow, with each traffic light a four-way stop. There has been
limited traffic, but there has been power (and gasoline and groceries)
available both 27 miles to the south of us and around 30 miles north for
those who needed it.

On Sunday I was able to fill up my van from a special disaster
distribution center that was set up, which saved me waiting through the
very long lines at the stations which were open. As of Sunday morning,
all the hospitals, water and wastewater treatment plants, and a main
corridor with gas stations and grocery stores had power - about 4% of
the county. That power was coming from the nearest hydroelectric
generation plant at Guntersville dam. By the end of the day, pwoer had
been restored to many more areas. I was really hopeful as I was driving
home last night power was on in my area - but it stopped about 1/2 mile
from my house. But a couple of hours later, we got power, followed
shortly after by cable and internet. A lot of the area is still without
power, and they have halted turning on more areas until they have more
capacity:
http://blog.al.com/breaking/2011/05/no_indication_when_tva_will_ad.html#cmpid=v2mode_be_smoref_face

Each day, it's been work from around 8 AM until 6PM, then a cold shower
and pass out.

The last two days, there have been more than 100 individual amateur
radio operators either in the operations centers (like me and Nick) or
out in the field. It's been amazing to see the capability that they
provide. During the whole disaster, the response of the Emergency
Management Agency here has been amazingly professional and prompt.
I can't imagine what it's like in the areas with more damage and a less
developed emergency response community. Our local ARES/RACES team has a
long history of cooperation and close work with the EMA, and it showed.

Today (Monday) was an off day for me, and I had thought that I would not
be called back for more work. I needed to get the house in order, hug my
wife and kids some more, do some critical laundry and make a grocery run
(everything in the frig was cooked or thrown out a couple of days ago).
I was expecting to be back at work at Canonical tomorrow.

But - I've been called back in to the Red Cross tomorrow. As operations
shift to cleanup, there has been less radio traffic for the EOC and more
for the Red Cross operations and field crews. I'm pretty sure that
tomorrow afternoon, we'll shift Net Control Operations from the EOC to
the Red Cross station, and I'll be helping with that - my brother Jason
(N2NLY) will also be there. Jason was in NYC for 9/11. We're a family
presence at the Red Cross.

The best thing for me after the health and safety of my family has been
that I've been able to help. In organizations like the Red Cross,
there's a definite spirit of Ubuntu, even for those who don't know the
word. As I meet the people working in logistics, mass care, disaster
assessment, etc - they have been very thankful to have a geek there.
Disaster response depends on radio, telephone, and networking.

Very quickly, the most valuable things to me in preparation for this
are lots of training and drills with the people I work with, the EmComm
training courses I took from ARRL, and experience working pileups on HF.
If you listen to the busy times we had on the audio from that day,
you'll see why.

Thanks,

Steve Conklin AI4QR

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