This is the original WSJ article:
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/0,,SB112597561578132422-u6wVATR7vnguM__uPJ3YNkKhKcw_20060906,00.html?mod=blogs
-----
HURRICANE KATRINA
As Telecom Reels
>From Storm Damage,
Ham Radios Hum
By CHRISTOPHER RHOADS
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
September 6, 2005; Page A19
MONROE, La. -- In a shelter here, 300 miles north of New Orleans, Theo
McDaniel took his plight to a young man fiddling with a clunky,
outdated-looking radio.
Mr. McDaniel, a 25-year-old barber, had evacuated New Orleans with his
wife and two small children more than a week ago and since then had had
no contact with his brother or his aunt. The last he heard, his 42-year-old
aunt was clinging to her roof.
"We've got to get a message down there to help them," he said. The man at
the radio sent the information to the emergency-operations center across
town, which relayed it to rescue units in New Orleans. Later in the
weekend, Mr. McDaniel learned that food and water were on the way to
his trapped brother and his brother's young family. He had heard nothing
about his aunt.
With Hurricane Katrina having knocked out nearly all the high-end
emergency communications gear, 911 centers, cellphone towers and normal
fixed phone lines in its path, ham-radio operators have begun to fill
the information vacuum. "Right now, 99.9% of normal communications in
the affected region is nonexistent," says David Gore, the man operating
the ham radio in the Monroe shelter. "That's where we come in."
In an age of high-tech, real-time gadgetry, it's the decidedly unsexy
ham radio -- whose technology has changed little since World War II --
that is in high demand in ravaged New Orleans and environs. The Red
Cross issued a request for about 500 amateur radio operators -- known
as "hams" -- for the 260 shelters it is erecting in the area. The
American Radio Relay League, a national association of ham-radio
operators, has been deluged with requests to find people in the
region. The U.S. Coast Guard is looking for hams to help with its
relief efforts.
Ham radios, battery operated, work well when others don't in part
because they are simple. Each operator acts as his own base station,
requiring only his radio and about 50 feet of fence wire to transmit
messages thousands of miles. Ham radios can send messages on multiple
channels and in myriad ways, including Morse code, microwave frequencies
and even email.
Then there are the ham-radio operators themselves, a band of radio
enthusiasts who spend hours jabbering with each other even during
normal times. They are often the first to get messages in and out
of disaster areas, in part because they are everywhere. (The ARRL
estimates there are 250,000 licensed hams in the U.S.) Sometimes
they are the only source of information in the first hours following
a disaster. "No matter how good the homeland-security system is, it
will be overwhelmed," says Thomas Leggett, a retired mill worker
manning a ham radio in the operations center here. "You don't hear
about us, but we are there."
Slidell, a town 30 miles northeast of New Orleans, was directly hit
by the hurricane and remains virtually cut off from the outside world.
One of the few, if not the only, communications links is Michael King,
a retired Navy captain, operating a ham radio out of a Slidell hospital.
"How are you holding up, Mike?" asked Sharon Riviere into a ham-radio
microphone at Monroe's operations center. She and her husband, Ron,
who is the president of the Slidell ham-radio club, had evacuated
before the storm to the home of some fellow ham-radio enthusiasts in
Monroe. She said Mr. King had been working 20-hour days since the storm
hit.
Crackling static and odd, garbled sounds followed her question to Mr.
King. Then he replied: "It's total devastation here. I've got 18 feet
of water at my house. Johnny's Cafe down there has water up to its roof."
Ms. Riviere asked about her own home, which is not far from Mr. King's.
"It's full of mud," King replied. "Looks like someone's been slugging it
out in there."
Ham radios are often most effective as one link in a chain of communication
devices. Early last week, someone trapped with 15 people on a roof of
a New Orleans home tried unsuccessfully to get through to a 911 center
on his cellphone. He was able to call a relative in Baton Rouge, who in
turn called another relative, Sybil Hayes, in Broken Arrow, Okla. Ms.
Hayes, whose 81-year-old aunt was among those stranded on the New
Orleans roof, then called the Red Cross in Broken Arrow, which handed
the message to its affiliated ham-radio operator, Ben Joplin.
Via stations in Oregon, Idaho and Louisiana, Mr. Joplin got the message
to rescue workers who were able to save the 15 people on the roof,
according to the ARRL, based in Newington, Conn. "We are like the
Pony Express," says the 26-year-old Mr. Gore, wearing black cowboy
boots. "One way or the other, even by hand, we will get you the message."
Mr. Gore, who is in charge of the northeastern district of Louisiana
for the Amateur Radio Emergency Service, has spent a lot of time the
past week at the Monroe shelter, helping evacuees try to track missing
friends and relatives.
Last Monday, Danita Alexander of Violet, La., came to a ham operator
in the Monroe shelter asking about her 96-year-old grandfather, Willie
Bright, who had been in a nursing home in New Orleans. The next day,
she got word back from a ham operator that he had been safely
transferred to a shelter near New Orleans. "We can't do enough of
these," says Mark Ketchell, who runs the ARES branch in Monroe.
Nevertheless, the ham-radio community feels under threat. Telecom
companies want to deliver broadband Internet connections over power
lines, which ham-radio operators say distorts communications in the
surrounding area. Since hams are "amateurs," there is little lobbying
money to fight such changes, they add.
The hams also get little respect from telecommunications-equipment
companies, such as Motorola Inc. "Something is better than nothing,
that's right," says Jim Screeden, who runs all of Motorola's repair
teams in the field for its emergency-response business. "But ham
radios are pretty close to nothing." Mr. Screeden says ham radios
can take a long time to relay messages and work essentially as
"party lines," with multiple parties talking at once. Says Mr.
Leggett at the Monroe operations center: "We are the unwanted
stepchild. But when the s- hits the fan, who are you going to call?"
Write to Christopher Rhoads at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-----
Thu, Sep 08, 2005 at 03:36:50PM -0400, Thom R LaCosta wrote:
> On Wed, 7 Sep 2005, EricJ wrote:
>
> >Your post didn't include this quote from Mr. James Screeden who is a Vice
> >President at Motorola working in the field, drawing a salary, and tending
> >to
> >the needs of his commercial accounts, NOT the suffering people of New
> >Orleans.
>
> A well meaning member of the list, sent me a copy of the Motorola PR
> response to the article,,,,and seemed to have a real hard time
> understanding that the PR guy's response wasn;t the same as the actual
> quote from Mr. Screeden.
>
> So, I would think that until the actual quote, in total of Mr. Screeden is
> known, then it's real difficult to prove the reporter misquoted him.
>
> If we are suspect of reporters, we should also be suspect of PR people.
>
>
> 73,Thom-k3hrn
> www.zerobeat.net Home of QRP Web Ring, Drakelist home page,
> Free Classified Ads for amateur radio, QRP IRC channel
> Elecraft Owners Database
> www.tlchost.net/hosting/ *** Web Hosting as low as 3.49/month
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