Communication in Times of Disaster

During the early days of the 20th Century, communication was slow and cumbersome. The crisis of the 1908 fire in San Francisco could only be understood on the East Coast as telegraph keys pounded out the details. Morse code ruled the day! Today's modern communication and emergency networks are far superior to what has existed in the past, when they work. The inherent problem with many of these new advances is that they are very dependent upon a rather fragile infrastructure. In 2003 the massive Eastern and Midwestern States as well as parts of Canada suffered a total electrical blackout affecting as many as 45 million people. More than 508 generating units at 265 power plants shut down during the outage. The reliability of the electrical grid was called into question. In 1999 Southern Brazil was darkened by a grid failure that started with a lightning strike. Over 95 million people went without electricity and more than 60,000 people were stuck in Rio’s subway system. The complex array of generators, transmitters and power lines appeared to “break apart” like a shattering tempered glass window. Just as a stack of dominoes, as one part of the integrated system fails, many other components quickly follow suit. According to Wikipedia, “As power lines carry more current, they get hotter. This causes them to lengthen and sag between towers. They may safely reach a specified minimum clearance height above the ground. If the lines sag further, a flashover to nearby objects (such as trees) can occur, causing a transient increase in current. Automatic protective relays detect the high current and quickly act to disconnect the faulted line from service. Should a fault occur and take a line out of service, the change in current flow is compensated by other transmission lines, which must have enough spare capacity to carry the excess current. If they do not, overload protection in those lines will also trip, causing a cascading failure as the excess current is switched onto neighboring circuits running at or near their capacity.” On August 29, 2005, the skies above many Gulf Coast towns went dark. When Hurricane Katrina finally passed, emergency services encountered great initial difficulty in establishing communications with rescuers and victims of the disaster-stricken areas. Power lines, cellular phone towers, radio antennae and emergency generators were completely knocked out. Immediately the call went out to a number of amateur radio operators to help with the relief and rescue operations. Morse code was among the various methods used by these operators that were essential in giving aid to emergency services. Without the ability to call on and rely upon the skills of amateur radio operators skilled in Morse code and other communication techniques, disaster relief just might come to a complete stand-still in some of the harshest conditions. Some of the very people who may consider the knowledge of Morse code to be past its prime become the very people that rely upon it when their own “modern” methods fail.