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Fall 2005 Issue |
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Oklahoma Amateurs
Respond In response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, hams all over the country were pressed into service to provide necessary communications. Here N7XYO describes the roles that Oklahoma amateur radio operators played, both in a rooftop rescue and in providing backbone communications at the Camp Gruber emergency shelter for persons displaced by the hurricane. By Mark Conklin,* N7XYO |
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There were 15 people trapped on the roof of their home in New Orleans as the flood waters from Hurricane Katrina raged by on August 29. They clung to the roof and watched as others floated by in the rushing flood waters. They had a cell phone, but none of the local emergency numbers worked. They called a relative in Baton Rouge. Because the local emergency numbers in Baton Rouge also were not working, that relative called Sybil Hayes, a relative living in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. Hayes had been worried about her 81-year-old aunt and her cousins in New Orleans all day as she watched the coverage of the storm. She tried and tried to call her aunt, but all circuits were busy. Then her phone rang; it was the call from the relative in Baton Rouge giving her the news of her elderly aunt. Sybil knew that the Red Cross could help, because the Red Cross had helped her family during a flood in 1995. She immediately contacted the Tulsa Oklahoma Chapter of the Red Cross.
The Tulsa Chapter of the Red Cross Emergency
Services, which has a partnership with the Tulsa Repeater Organization (TRO
is a Tulsa-area amateur radio group dedicated to public service), had a
plan. Red Cross emergency services put the plan into action and contacted
response team member Paul Papke, WB5MPU. |
 Ed Compos, K5CRQ “NIC 2,” and Mark Conklin, N7XYO “Command 1,” review daily assignments and communications needs at Camp Gruber. (Photo by Fred Williams, KD5NBR) |
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