The Hawaii DMAT team recently deployed to support the recovery efforts from Hurricane Irma in Florida. A DMAT team is a Disaster Medical Assistance Team and is a group of professional and para-professional medical personnel organized to provide rapid-response medical care or casualty decontamination during a terrorist attack, natural disaster, or other incident in the United States. The Hawaii DMAT Team, also known as “Kalawao Rescue”, constituted of five members that are amateur radio operators supporting the communication efforts. The team returned to Hawaii on 20 September 2017. The five amateur radio operators that mobilized with the HI DMAT Team to Florida consisted of: Toby Clairmont – KH7FR Bart Aronoff – KH7C Jack Tsujimura- KH6DQ Jasyon Kohama – WH6BXK Carter Davis- KH6FV HI DMAT Key West in support of Hurricane Irma September 2017 The team helped stand up a medical surge facility so residence could be treated and continued to run the facility until they were relieved by PA-1 DMAT. Because of the difficulty of getting flights to Atlanta, GA from Hawaii, the team departed Hawaii on September 5 & 6. Atlanta was our first staging point then we drove 6 vans to Orlando and then flew out of Orlando into Key West. Lots of logistics with people and cache of equipment. The DMAT team flew out of Orlando and into Key West on 2 USCG C-130s and were the first outside federal resource to arrive. Two C17s flew in with the team’s cache from Virginia. Initially they had no power (the team had generators), zero to limited running water, no showers, only MREs and no internet, no cell phone… just the stars at night and Dengue/Zika mosquitoes, Carter stated. HI DMAT BOO Key West in support of Hurricane Irma Recovery September 2017 A Federal Force Protection team from Texas provided protection for the personal and the cache of supplies and pharmaceuticals. The first Satellite call out was, “how to get an ice machine running?” We got it going and boy does cold water go down better than warm water. The team left a lot of aloha there Carter stated. Hawaii DMAT is also known as Kalawao Rescue within the State of Hawaii; a nonfederal configuration of the team that provides enhanced services to the State of Hawaii. Kalawao Rescue is administered by HAH Emergency Services. HAH Emergency Services, a division of the Healthcare Association of Hawaii, deploys emergency response teams Hawaii DMAT for casualty care, aeromedical transport, medical surge and incident management. Hawaii DMAT is a trained corps of medical professionals who respond to calls for medical surge, disaster and humanitarian assistance throughout the U.S. and the Pacific Region. There are currently more than 75 members of Hawaii DMAT. Hawaii DMAT provides on-scene high acuity casualty care services within 2 to 4 hours of request. Thanks to Carter, KH6FV, for providing the information and to him and the team for their support of this effort. You can find the Hawaii DMAT team Fact sheet by clicking here. http://health.hawaii.gov/injuryprevention/files/2015/11/FACT-SHEET-Hawaii-DMAT-SEPT-2015.pdf Stacy KH6OWL ARRL Public Information Officer – Honolulu https://www.facebook.com/Hawaii-ARRL-319960095044617/ https://oahuarrlnews.wordpress.com/ https://twitter.com/PAC_SECTION
Curious--what band(s) did they use in support of the relief effort? I've stayed off 60m for awhile just in case.
This is great... But the real problem domestically is Puerto Rico. There, you will find no tidy parking lots to set up air conditioned tents. NW PR is the scene of a major disaster with Maria: imagine (equivalent of) an F4 tornado lasting 5 hours and dropping 20+ inches of rain, limestone hills eroding in a flood, ALL roads blocked by debris, hills defoliated by wind. No services. No electricity. Floods. Failing dam(s). Rich rainforest transformed into a hellish stick farm as far as the eye can see. No shelter (roofs gone/houses collapsed). Dire survival. That is PR, right now. The news doing a poor job of reporting. Only info right now from ham radio and FEMA airborne assessment. PR not even on the front page of CNN right now... Pray for Puerto Rico. Helps til it hurts. 73 Chip W1YW
There is something missing here - they arrived shortly before the storm hit the Keys but were back in Hawaii by September 20, just a few days after the storm subsided and when recovery activities were getting underway and when PR was getting hammered.
...but it makes a 'feel good ' headline. I am sure they did great things...but it is painful to see this' we are cool and generous' piece at the same time that PR is festering in hell . There is NO 'amateur radio news' homepage piece on PR. Ham radio is the ONLY form of comms right now in some parts of PR. Furthermore, the hills are only accessible via helicopter airdrop. Imagine what HTs with portable repeaters could do right now... I passed along the situation to Nadia Drake (via her folks) on Arecibo Observatory and that was the first factual piece that has been on the web for NW PR. Its on the Nat Geo website. My 'amateur radio news' submissions never make the home page on the Zed-- so I refuse to submit 'amateur radio news' any longer. Incidentally the Keys are above the disaster level....they start school again Monday in Key West for example . My former intern teaches there and he has all utilities up.And there is very little Dengue in the Keys. Misleading IMO.
They landed in Atlanta and after the storm drove to Orlando and then flew into Key west. DMAT teams usually stay 14 days because of the long hours they work and then are received by another DMAT team.
At least there's this on the front page of Fox News now: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/09/2...steria-starting-to-spread-plead-for-help.html A lot more dire than one could imagine.... FEMA and all the other agencies are stretched pretty thin right now; hope help gets there as fast as possible! 73, Jeff
Here are a few facts. 1 The team was pre staged in Atlanta then drove to Orlando before the storm. 2 The parking lot you see was under over 2 ft of water. I know I had to clear the drains to drain it. 3 We used simplex uhf for local comms and along the route from Atlanta. 4 We were first in to setup the portable hospital, get it operational, and man it until the next team came in. 5 There was no reports on this because the media could not get into the area.
The ARRL web site now has the up to date, relevant status of PR, including Arecibo Observatory, which was severely damaged. Several hams have been aware of this and have held back from publicising pending more info. We are now seeing (publicly) the first of several damage assessments on the observatory. The people of NW PR are in DIRE straights. Ham radio is still the only reliable comms on that part of the island, although a few satphones (IRIDIUM) have been distributed. The disaster in PR is long term and we should assume hams will play a major part in comms for the time being.
Here is an excerpt from a narrative on CNN on the conditions in Key West, just two days after Irma: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- The next morning brought a glorious sunrise, but with the taunt of "NO SERVICE" on every phone, we still feared the worst in Key West. Our worry was blessedly unfounded. The most populous spot in the chain survived with mostly tree and boat damage. While we braced for dark desperation, nearly every local offered us food and water and the only plea for humanitarian aid came from a woman who cried out, "Do you guys have a wine opener we can borrow." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Blessedly, aid was not needed, apparently.
