at http://www.bloglines.com/blog/CivilizedExplorer where you can subscribe to RSS feeds.
A list of the stuff in Stuff:
*In the San Francisco Bay Area, we are subject to earthquakes, and evacuation may be impossible. In that event, we will have to shelter in place, and a grab and stay kit is imperative.
March 20, 2006
If you are dialing from a cell phone, 911 may get you the CHP in a city not in
San Mateo County.
This list
may give you the direct number for help from fire,
police, and ambulance services, but confirm these numbers before you
need them.
March 9, 2006
After Hurricane Katrina, the Asian tsunami, and other natural disasters,
professional photographers have learned the value of backups and off-site
storage. For local storage, some are using the professional size Igloo brand
coolers seen on commercial fishing boats, kayaking dry bags, and CDs or DVDs
as containers of information. The needs of hams vary from the needs of
photographers, but there's a surprising amount of overlap. We may want to
protect our expensive radios and personal items, and they still fit in those
coolers or dry bags. If you have external hard drives and take them with you,
be sure to bring the power cords - some are proprietary, rendering your drive
and its contents inaccessible if you can't get power to it. Additionally,
photographers in New Orleans went without telephone land lines and Internet
access for months after they got power back. A photorapher in Thailand reported
15 years of work lost forever after the tsunami - he had all this data backed
up, but it was all in his home. While I don't completely trust online backup
services, ease of use has made me subscribe to a service which stores my files
in San Diego, a long way from my San Fransciso Bay Area home. If my home and
its contents are totally wrecked in an earthquake (all those fragile CDs and
DVDs in their fragile jewelbox cases shattered, I'm sure), I'll still have
access to my electronic data when I eventually get back online.
And it's not just natural disasters that destroy our stuff - burst water pipes
and leaking roofs can wreck our electronics just as thoroughly as an earthquake
or hurricane. If you have a fire, you not only have to worry about fire damage
but water damage by the fire department. How well- protected is your gear
right now?
March 5, 2006
There is a list of
area emergency frequencies
on the Santa Clara County ARES/RACES Web site. The list says it's for Silicon
Valley, and I would be interested in knowing if anyone has such a list online
for the rest of the peninsula.
March 3, 2006
But not for a ham. This guy had WiFi, but it was blocked by a church spire. So
he built a tower 60 feet tall to "see" over the obstruction. The story is
interesting in how the author set about determining the location for his new
tower, finding a used one, and getting it home. He even used scrap cement for
his base. Total cost: 404 CND, plus a ton of labor. (Note that 14,000 lbs of
cement came in free.)
March 1, 2006
Wired has an
article
on comms in New Orleans -- as of February, it's still a problem. The author of the
article has no emergency services background and writes about seeing the spray-
painted Xs on searched houses and what they mean. It's a short article, and the
second page has some comments on what it means to have no means of communications
with regular residents of a devastated town, many of whom have been relocated to
other parts of the country.
Suit Sat Launch on February 3, 2006
On February 3, astronauts aboard the International Space Station are going
to through a spacesuit overboard. The suit will have gear inside it, and
the purpose is to see if old spacesuits could function as useful
satellites.
NASA has more information on its
SuitSat
page. The SuitSat will be in an orbit similar to the ISS, so you can listen
in to the suit's telemetry (in plain English) on 145.990MHz
FM. Unfortunately, they're usually overhead around 3:00AM local time. Use
NASA's
J-Pass
Java program to get exact times. It's semi-painful to use, asking you to
verify the security certificate and the time. After the Java applet loads,
enter your ZIP code or lat/long, then click Options. On the popup window,
click Control, then choose All Passes from Search Criteria; click OK. Then
back in the main applet window, click Next Pass.
January 22, 2006
The January 2006 issue of
CQ Amateur Radio Magazine
has an article
beginning on page 52 with an interesting commentary about life after a
major hurricane. There was no power and there were no phones for 35,000
people after Hurricane Rita hit south Texas. Amateur repeaters were useable
only if they had backup generators and only so long as they had fuel. There
was no power to pump gasoline and diesel, so when the generators ran dry,
there was no replenishment.
Without repeaters, amateurs working with the Red Cross and Salvation Army relied on 40M SSB as mobile canteens attempted to provide food to those in need (no refrigeration without power, and electric stoves did not work). There were only three mobile HF operators. This meant that the mobile canteens without amateurs along could not report from the field; they had to return to the depot to alert the HQ staff if there was insufficient food, increasing the time it took to provide adequate food and wasting considerable fuel in the process.
January 8, 2006
FEMA is offering a course for state and local elected officials, emergency
managers, and others on the use of amateur radio volunteers during an
emergency. Information on the course is rather sparse. It is offered
through the Catalog of Courses for the National Fire Academy and the
Emergecny Management Institute. The catalog is available in .pdf format and
downloads automatically from this link:
Publication FA-273.pdf
The course is G250.6, "Workshop: Amateur Radio Resources." A different course
list is available at
FEMA
Independent Study Program
where you will find many very helpful online courses.
October 2005
Construction crews from Burning Man left the playa and went directly to
Biloxi, Mississippi, to help with the reconstruction of a Buddhist Temple
there. Photographs are at
velzyland's photo
galleries.
As we might expect, the devastation is heartbreaking. In addition to
helping with the reconstruction, the Burners are operating a huge "walmart
without walls" in a geodesic dome. If you look close, you can tell it's
still coated in playa dust.
911 calls in New Orleans failed completely because the 911 call center and all backups failed: no power, underwater, no people. See the article at Thousands of Katrina 911 Calls Went Astray.
In the face of the recent (as of Sept/Oct 2005) unpleasant weather, the New York Times (free registration required) has an article on how to have all your financial and medical records ready for a quick getaway in the event of an emergency, no- notice evacuation. The author suggests flash drives or CF media. Most of us have stuff in our grab and go bag, but if we have to evacuate, we can also have a digital record of our credit cards, digital photos of our valuables, and scans of important documents.
Naturally, this was picked up by slashdot for discussion since we should encrypt those files and since flash drives come in assorted flavors, including shock- proof, water- proof, and whatever. So for a geek's point of view of grab and go kits, see Condensing Your Life on to a USB Flash Drive? There are different priorities among geeks.
Let it never be said that hams are not geeks. Hams are even geekier than computer geeks. So if you want a bootable CD with all your stuff on it, drop by Ars Technica for "Download, burn, and boot" an article on how to create a live Linux distro with minimal hardware requirements.
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