By: Sherry Nicholson
Red Cross disaster volunteer Wayne Robertson and fellow members of the Atlanta Radio Club spent a beautiful Saturday – December 4th – hamming it up at our regional headquarters for a KG4ARC Special Event.
The question is, who even knows there is an amateur radio station - KG4ARC - tucked away on the first floor of our Red Cross building, ready to broadcast emergency updates if all other methods of communication fail?! Thankfully, these guys do!
This gathering of about a dozen hams (licensed amateur radio operators) from the Atlanta Radio Club honored the approaching 200th birthday of Red Cross founder Clara Barton (December 25th) while engaging in something she strongly advocated – disaster preparedness. They set up multiple temporary radio stations along the sidewalk in the Atlanta Red Cross parking lot (see photos) and conducted a four-hour “sprintathon” with other hams from all over the nation. They also activated the equipment in our Red Cross Radio Room for the event.
The Special Event was a big success and demonstrated, once again, the capability of amateur radio to set up "in the field" and run off battery power in the event of a widespread power and internet outage. They made 317 contacts with outside ham operators, some as far away as California and three from Canada. Two of the connections were with other Red Cross chapter operators - one in LaGrange, Georgia and one in Eastern North Carolina
According to Wayne, there has been no activation of amateur radio operators in Georgia for disasters in several years, however, there were hams in Atlanta standing by and ready to serve during the Super Bowl in 2019 if needed. In February, a group of hams were on the air in Texas when the power grid went down, and others helped in Louisiana this year for Hurricane Ida. The use of amateur radio operators remains an important part of the disaster response strategy for the American Red Cross which has a Memorandum of Understanding with the ARRL, the national organization for amateur radio.
Locally, the Atlanta Radio Club held its monthly meetings in our building (pre-COVID) and has been a valuable ally. Two volunteers from the club helped to install a new antenna on the roof of our building to allow our radio gear to reach out hundreds and thousands of miles for emergency communication. The Red Cross is grateful for their steadfast partnership and Wayne is eager to get more disaster volunteers involved with ham radio.
Meanwhile, the Club is exploring the hosting of another Special Event station for the Red Cross next year, possibly in May, to commemorate the anniversary of the founding of the Red Cross on May 21, 1881.
Stay tuned!