ARRL leadership has been engaged throughout the weekend with key volunteers in the southeast, especially in hard hit North Carolina, to facilitate any support headquarters can provide to the impacted area. The devastation is widespread and greater than many seasoned emergency responders have ever seen before.
There are ad-hoc health and welfare nets that have popped up, parallel to official emergency communications efforts. Amateur radio operators in the area that have the means to communicate have been facilitating some level of traffic on several repeaters located on mountaintops in North and South Carolina.
High frequency (HF) ham bands are also being used, specifically 7232 KHz and 3923 KHz.
There are amateur radio operators working with several aviation relief organizations which mobilize general aviation aircraft donated by private owners to ferry in supplies. The challenge is widespread devastation of road networks to get anything in to the “last mile” of distribution.
ARRL remains ready to mobilize HamAid equipment as needed. HamAid is a supply of deployment-ready amateur radio gear that can be dispatched across the country within hours, providing amateur radio communications when local equipment has been lost or damaged due to a disaster.
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