From the roof of Jefferson Tower, 17 stories and more than 280 feet high, you can see for miles in all directions. For decades, the building has been the signature piece of the UAB Hospital campus and a landmark visible all around Birmingham. It now houses medical offices rather than patients, but in the aftermath of the catastrophic storms that swept through Alabama in April, the old veteran made another significant contribution to Birmingham health care—as an antenna.

This radio drama begins with another natural disaster and an amateur radio enthusiast known as KJ4KZ. "After Hurricane Katrina, responders such as the police, fire and rescue, and EMA [emergency management agencies] were severely handicapped because they couldn’t communicate,” says J. Vann Martin, director of facilities and capital projects for the UAB Health System. "In a disaster situation, particularly a natural disaster, landlines and cell phones often stop working.”

Martin, better known in the world of amateur radio, or "ham” radio, by his call sign, KJ4KZ, is the president of the Healthcare Community Amateur Radio Club (HCARC). The newly formed club has established a command center in UAB Hospital that can coordinate care at all major hospitals in the Birmingham area using rooftop antennas on Jefferson Tower and other locations.

Licensed amateur radio operators are the perfect addition to the emergency management structure, Martin points out. They can continue broadcasting on battery power in even the most catastrophic conditions, he says, and if their onboard batteries go dead, a pair of jumper cables and a car battery will solve the problem. In 2009, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) started offering grants to health-care organizations willing to purchase and install radio equipment that would keep them in the communication loop in case of an emergency—if they could find volunteer operators to run the radios. Martin, a 20-year veteran of amateur radio, jumped at the chance to take part.