Ham radios kept responders connected during blackout
Emergency Management Alert, September 5, 2003
During the massive blackout in the Northeast on August 14, a group of ham radio operators helped connect firefighters and other emergency personnel, the Associated Press reports.
Ham operators do not need servers or cell towers, and with battery backups can operate when power grids cannot. The radios are operated by a network of volunteers organized by the Newington, CT-based American Radio Relay League (ARRL).
After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the ARRL won a federal Homeland Security grant of nearly $182,000 to train amateur radio operators in emergency operations to help during terrorist attacks.
During the August outage, about 100 ARRL volunteers in the New York-Long Island region hit their assigned frequency or staffed emergency operations centers. Ham operators handled 800 to 1,000 communications from that Thursday afternoon until early Friday, according to an ARRL coordinator.
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