Quote History Quoted:
I guess I am missing something in your example, are you saying every tower in Joplin got wiped out at once during a storm or could?
View Quote
Caveat: I wasn't there. I was living just east of St. Louis at the time. Reports and images are easy to find, Joplin 2011.
Here is one report from the Mo DPS
Report that there are fifty cell sites that are off the network. Ten of these sites are off the network due to damage.
And another report:
cell phone communications were spotty due to 17 toppled phone towers.
When storms like the wrath of tornadoes that swept across the SE 7 years ago, or Rita or Sandy or Katrina or ... happen 2 or 3 spare towers a couple of days later aren't going to resolve all the problems.
And stronger towers are going to help. Look at the
details of destruction.
"In one of the medical arts parking lot just west of St John’s Hospital, 200 to 300 pound concrete parking stops rebarred into the asphalt were lifted and tossed from 30 to 60 yards."
First Net or not, I say that the amateur radio community that wants to be ready to help needs to:
1-have distributed stocks of easy to deploy VHF/HF antennas as relevant to your areas.
2-practice grabbing batteries out of cars (did you put vice grips in your kit?).
3-setting up antennas by sticking up a pole and guy wires and hooking up.
Because for the first day after a major event your Emergency manager is going to need communications.
Once AT&T/whoever + your state/federal emergency ops are rolling then we may be packing up our radios and volunteering to manage recharging batteries for the first responders.
Or cleaning & cooking for them.
First we need a plan for when their and our Plan A to use the local EOC fails. Because its not there anymore.
And we to make that plan in coordination with your local Emergency Manager.
Show them with a demo what you can do with nothing more than what you can pull out of your caches of gear.
Be relevant to the effort to return to normal or expect to be a victim receiving services.