Storm Chronicles: Peninsula hams

By CATE GABLE
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Reprinted from the Chinook Observer

Editor's Note: We are publishing this series of storm stories to encourage Peninsula residents to attend a Community Forum on Saturday Jan. 26, at the Ocean Park Elementary School. The convening question will be "How can we as a community support emergency action planning and create networks that will serve the well-being of us all?"

Frank Wolfe, north end Peninsula resident since 1977 smiles and says, "We're not on the way to anywhere. Either you want to be here, or you're lost ... and often the latter becomes the former."

It's true that being at the end of the world has kept our little piece of paradise protected for decades but, after the Big Blow, it also meant that we fell off the map.

Wolfe loves our area and has played an important role in creating a communications network that very few of us know about. But it played a critical function for all of us during the storm.

Wolfe is an Extra Class - the top of three categories - ham or amateur radio operator. But even more importantly, Wolfe has boot-strapped a robust network of repeater towers that boost local ham signals allowing them to be carried far out of our county.

He maintains seven towers in Pacific County, three in Grays Harbor County, one in Thurston, and several in other places in the state. As Wolfe puts it, "When you've got the knowledge, you share it."

"We just got back from a snow-cat ride up Capital Peak outside of Olympia. There's six feet of snow up there right now and our tower antennae is broken. So we'll have to go back up when the snow melts and repair it."

Wolfe goes on to explain, "When everything else fails, then you count on the hams to get a message through. We have limited capacity but we are very, very, very flexible."

Why can a ham message get through when phone messages cannot? The ham signal operates on a different frequency, one that can only travel short distances; hence the need for repeater towers that carry the signal from one point to another. But this short-distance signal is robust.

And there is 'redundancy' built into the system. Hams have many ways of getting a message through. If one doesn't work, another method is tried.

So during the storm, when phone lines - which use a commercial microwave system - were down, the hams were 'hamming it up,' listening on the "informal network" and passing on messages when needed.

When Pacific County Emergency Management Coordinator Stephanie Fritts, who is one of many local officials who has a ham license, called to "formalize the net," a core group of hams began manning the designated Emergency Operation Centers (EOC) around the county.

There is an EOC in South Bend, at the Annex Building behind the courthouse; one upstairs in the Long Beach County Building and one at the Ocean Park Fire Station.

Each of these EOCs has a ham operator on duty 12 to 14 hours a day during a "formal net," and each EOC is in communication with the state Emergency Command Center (ECC) located at Camp Murray near Tacoma. At the ECC there is a permanent ham station.

"It works like this," Wolfe explains, "if someone from Kansas calls their local Red Cross worried about Aunt Maud living in Oysterville, the message gets sent as close as it can to Aunt Maud. Then it gets passed by hams until someone on the Peninsula who is listening on the net, hears the message and reports back that Aunt Maud is fine. Then the message gets passed back up the line."

"If Aunt Maud isn't fine, or no one knows for sure, an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) might be sent out to find her or to help her get what she needs."

The world of hams, though full of acronyms and a lingo all its own, is not a special secret society.

Anyone willing to put in about 10 hours of study can take the ham radio technician licensing test. If 70 percent of the 35 questions are answered correctly, the applicant will be assigned a unique call sign and will be authorized to use a ham radio. (Hams in Pacific County have call signs that begin with K, N, W and A.)

In fact, Wolfe will be teaching a ham radio class four evenings on the Peninsula at the Long Beach Fire Hall from 7 to 9 p.m., Feb. 6, 20, 22, and March 5. This should provide sufficient preparation for passing the ham radio technician license test.

Wolfe says there are between 50 and 75 licensed hams on the Peninsula, though not all of them are active. He would like to see one out of every 10 citizens be trained and licensed as a ham.

Bud Cuffel, the only Pacific County Commissioner who is currently a ham, agrees. "In this last storm, the ham radio operators served our community well. The Peninsula was isolated. It cost us $700,000 just to clear the roads of trees. Sometimes a ham message was the only thing that could get through."

Wolfe says, "Now imagine roads not just blocked by trees, but roads that are just chasms of water, all washed out."

He is talking, of course, about the effects a tsunami will likely have on our Peninsula when every ocean beach access road cut through the primary dunes will be an avenue of incursion for the water.

But whether it's a tidal wave or another storm that takes down our power lines and blocks our roads, Wolfe emphasizes, "You need to be prepared to be on your own a minimum of three days with shelter, food, water and heat."

Wolfe and his wife Kathleen Sayce have their emergency kits all ready to go and they include portable ham radios.

Wolfe will be attending our post-storm Community Forum on Jan. 26 at the Ocean Park Elementary School to share his ham stories and to invite further discussion. If you would like to help with this event, please e-mail Nanci Main at nanci@willapabay.org or call her at 665-5340.

Main needs chairs and tables, people to help with the potluck meals and anyone who can assist with computers and note taking.

For more information on the ham radio class, contact class organizer Dave Glasson at 642-2900. There is also a Pacific County Ham Radio Club that meets the first Sunday of every month at 9 a.m. at Harbor Lights Restaurant.

•••Also note an update from last week's Storm Chronicles on our local pharmacies: Sue Freese called to say that starting Tuesday of storm week, the Long Beach Pharmacy owners Jeff and Casey Harrell and Tom Sutherland rounded up a generator. They had the Long Beach Pharmacy up and running and serving customers for both Ilwaco and Ocean Park pharmacies as well. Even though insurance records could not be accessed, our local pharmacists were issuing five-day supplies of most medications. Just another example of our Peninsula can-do spirit!