Force of Two: In Depth stories from 2 Puerto Rico volunteers on HamRadioNow

For the home emergency kit: cash in ones.

 

Puerto Rico is in trouble most likely because it isn't ran by a "bunch of old white men". Tired of all this white male bashing going on in academia and social media. How about the best qualified person for the job regardless of color or sex. Ham radio operators are overwhelming white males so why wouldn't it be the same with our leadership positions? Only so much an outside emergency group can do for a mismanaged territory like Puerto Rico. Hopefully Puerto Rico can make it through this and learn something in the process.

 

"In Puerto Rico the storm hit on the 19th and 20th. On the 22nd the call came from Red Cross. The first hams arrived in country on about the 27th."

Vent


Residents of Puerto Rico LIVE in hurricane alley. They DID have warning about Maria and it's size. The magnitude of TOTAL destruction is still no excuse not to have adequate supplies - blaming "running out of water" few days after Maria departed on lack of outside "help" ?

It is no excuse that residents of Houston did SAME , ignoring warnings , during IKE and than complained for lack of timely response of FEMA - with drinking water , ice (!) and SOME MRE's.


I still like to hear from PR resident telling that sending S/H@W messages OUTSIDE PR was his immediate and utmost priority.

From recent Houston area floods I gather that wast majority of disaster "victims" want to be save whatever they can and get back to reconstruction.
Neither FEMA or ARC were instrumental to accommodate that.

It was up to each neighborhood residents and local organizations to START clean ups.
It was up to local churches to "communicate" community needs - not FEMA or ARC.
It was the help received from around the country - from "Cajun navy " to firemen from Oregon.

I my opinion - the "request to provide for S@W traffic by ARC" was closely coordinated publicity stunt by ARC and ARRL with no real plans to implement it as of a needed value to PR residents.

Both ARRL and ARC now blame , by being silent about it, other organizations that the original (goofy) S@W idea deteriorated into fragmented "rouge" support of FEMA and others.

If amateur radio operations will be of any actual help and usage in future - requests for such operations should come from LOCAL organizations and as a support of LOCAL organizations ( fire , police , social groups, churches, city hall, county judge , major , hospitals etc). They MAY have an "emergency operation plan " to follow already in place(?)

The old joke about "I am from (ARRL/ACR/FEMA ) government , I am here to help " has been , sadly , confirmed by current bickering among all of us involved and solution (for future armature radio involvement in communication help) ) is nowhere in sight.

I for one has been a supporter of amateur radio providing ONLY for H@W, no real (911) or supportive ( send TP) messages.
AFTER recent events I believe that amateur radio community is incapable to coherently function as a "communicator group " even for such simple H@W traffic.
It is the head - ARRL /ARES - who should wiggle the tails and not the however well intended tails wiggling by himself.

But nobody will admit that the "emperor has no clothes" and we will continue to praise the few while nursing our collective black eye.

73 Shirley

PS.
My "72 hour emergency kit" includes about $100 in greenbacks.

 

I agree with this assessment. Closer to the truth.

 

An ex girlfriend is a Princeton grad and Harvard MBA. She is on the board of a major auto firm. She runs things. Well. She is Puerto Rican. She has been guiding various efforts you feel would be best 'fixed' by old white men. Old white men ask her for advise.

This old white man asks her for advise without hesitation.

Puerto Rico is complex and difficult.

I tell you what. Why don't you take a bunch of old white men, let them solve the 'Salton Sea problem' (an evaporated bastion of old white men playtime) and then we shall send them down to Puerto Rico. IOW, let'em cut their teeth on a smaller, tractable problem to solve.

Ooops. They failed so far at that one--why would they do any better in Puerto Rico?

 

Hi Shirley,

I must admit I have better information than you on these two issues. I have not divulged the second: my son lives in Houston and we are still sorting out the post-storm problems.

But let's stick with PR.

I don't think you have a sense of the massive destruction that Maria leveled. Your comments sound like preparation would have prevented most of this. Not true. There was INDEED prep, because cisterns were filled and supplies were bought up, for the previous hurricane a week earlier, for example.

The problem with Maria is you are looking at it as a windy rainstorm. That is a poor analogy. Maria was essentially a massive F3 tornado. That went on for hours. Typical US housing would have not even had the walls survive that onslaught, let alone cisterns, and so on. The 'tiny home' PR houses you see, which are typical of Carib and SA construction, are short, one story, reinforced concrete with attached roofs. The walls in many (hardly all) homes survived, but everything else was destroyed. IOW, PR residents are better prepared than you or I for hurricanes, but Maria was something else.

Did you know that the Arecibo Observatory-- a sheltered hole in the karst region-- saw 90+ MPH continuous winds, and 40 INCHES OF RAIN?

Please tell me how you prepare for that: Noah's Ark?

73
Chip W1YW

 

15 years ago or so, anyone with a license and a desire could be in ARES. It look like things have changed. I looked at the ARES web site and it now mentions training. It hasn't always been like that, and some people pushed the issue.

 

My group has a different approach. We stand up as a group on request by our served agency, the city. As trained volunteers we staff positions in the EOC to include answering phones, admin support, audio visual, security, as well as running ham nets. At a recent turnout of 175,000 marchers the cellular systems crashed. Ham operators in the march relayed medical calls and provided situational awareness to the EOC more accurate than the police reports. Our central plans is to establish city wide nets for neighborhood groups to talk to each other and to the EOC. (What is the old saying? Plans are a way to make God laugh.)

Absent a group activation we support our neighborhoods with tactical comms and nets until the city activates us. We keep our edge in public service events with planning, organization, leadership, and operational practice.

 

A written reply by ARRL to the Force of Two episode at 2:00

https://www.hamradionow.tv/episodes/2017/11/3/hrn-364-icom-stuns-kills-dmr-click-bait-title

 

As Gary said, the 'note' says nothing. But it is an excellent example of, IMO, a lawyer-written piece designed to say nothing.

Again, the transparency issue.

IF the ARRL had reason to believe Jeremy's account was inaccurate, this 'note' would have been the opportunity to say so.

Nothing said.

Absence of addressing the issue takes the matter from something that could 'blow over' to, IMO, something that gets brought up again, and again, over many years.

Can someone transcribe the note and post it here?

If we are all to learn from this situation with Jeremy and the ARRL, it is important that it be accessible for others.

 

Here is my standard reply

Continuing referring to differences between Houston and PR nature of the disaster DOES NOT provide any new inside HOW to execute amateur radio involvement NEXT time. It is superfluous. OT, and probably a reason why entertainment media no longer follow EITHER disaster.

We as a group need to move forward and get ready for next one or just quit fooling ourselves as "when everything fails..." .....

End of standard reply.

Back to speculative BS.

There is a difference between "cistern" and ANY COMMON container LOCATED in any household filled with water. For example those 2l soda plastic bottles are pretty cheap and probably will stay put when stored in those concrete structures you have mentioned.
And there are 5 gallon buckets etc.
In is not necessary to have government certified water container for flushing the toilet.

No, I do not care how much water Arecibo received - IT IS DONE.

Here is yet another small tid-bit to haggle about if we as a group won't move forward.

It has been mentioned that "force of two" encountered columns of parked cars in "cell phone service hot spot".
So SOME PR residents drove around looking for such spots (!) with scarce fuel in their cars , using "in-passable roads" (for supply trucks ) to access "non existed cell service". Such service apparently had plenty of diesel for their generators to run while local hospitals were running out.

Would it make more sense to use still available fuel to communicate , communication has never been limited to Winlink etc, between LOCAL agencies or just deliver needed supplies instead?
Just a thought.

73 Shirley
in smoke filed W6 land , hope HR will fare better here.

 

If the Red Cross offers an evaluation of the ham volunteers and the response I sincerely hope they share it so that we can all learn. I think it is fair to say that we all just want to do a better job.

 

George Patton is said to have declared, "My men can eat their belts, but my tanks must have gas." Fuel is a key to a response and recovery. Fuel is needed for emergency generators, for grocery trucks, and for relief and medical teams in vehicles to respond. Surviving cell towers are often backed up with generators that need fuel. Ham radio operators can power their radios off vehicle batteries as long as there is gas in the tanks.

 

Shirley,

I am disappointed to see your disconnect from certain facts.

Allow me to point out that diesel fuel was in plentiful supply, and still is. But as you know, few smaller generators are diesel powered. How do I know this? Because I sent in many gas generators myself. These have been distributed at doctors offices and power municipal buildings. Transport to regional hospitals --read: delivering diesel fuel--was problematic for several weeks because only certain roads could sustain truck traffic after the mudslides and washouts.

Many of the water lines were destroyed in the mud slides, which is why water is hard to get. Certainly people had supplies going into the storm, but not for several weeks afterwards. Perhaps we should all take the cue of Mormons and have a year's worth of food and water, but what makes sense in the Deseret Region may be untenable in a small lot in the Puerto Rican hills.

Most of the time since 20 Sept it has been dry as a bone: there have been two storms since Maria. People did brilliant things like pack up PVC tubing by hand and tap into the few waterfalls in the hill country, to transport water. An example? WA3FET's farm in the hills.

Unfortunately, about 25% of the island's fresh water supply is from the rainforest area, that is clogged by debris and mudslides, still. Cutoff water.

Shirley, what is it exactly the people of the hills--90% of PR's terrain--should have done in preparation for a catastrophic event such as this?

Place yourself in their spot: what would you have done in anticipation of catastrophic conditions?

73
Chip W1YW

 

The text of the ARRL meaningless placeholder statement is below. (ie, RST 5NN)

73 de John - WØPV

American Radio Relay League Statement on Incident with Volunteer in Puerto Rico

First, the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) is extremely proud of the work that its volunteers have been doing, and are still doing, to assist in the disaster relief efforts taking place from Houston to Florida to Puerto Rico to California. These are very stressful and difficult situations that require great teamwork and adaptability on the part of the people who volunteered to put themselves in harm’s way. We believe that the amateur radio volunteers have provided valuable and needed assistance.

Second, it is important to remember that the volunteers who undertake these initiatives including amateur radio operators, who are not members of ARRL, work under the auspices of the disaster relief organizations, such as FEMA, the American Red Cross, and the U.S. military, that called on us to help. As part of the vetting process, volunteers are made aware that they are responsible for following the instructions and procedures of those organizations that they are there to assist.

Recently, ARRL officials were made aware of a situation involving a volunteer amateur radio operator who, while assisting with relief and communications efforts in Puerto Rico, reportedly did not follow the Red Cross directives. The Red Cross is currently assessing the issue and will take the appropriate steps.