Monday, September 15, 2008

Hurricane Ike - Monday

Hurricane Ike, now just a lot of rain streaming across the New England countryside, is all but over. Here at the EOC, the people movers, the search/rescue folks are all working at taking increasing numbers of evacuees out of the Galveston/Houston area and placing them in shelters here and the Metroplex area. Our part, the ARES Hams will stand-down at 6am tomorrow. We remain on stand-by for call out to travel to the disaster area. Several local Hams have volunteered to make the trip if called upon. I don't have the necessary "Go Kit" to be of any assistance. I've talked to several Hams having Go Kits and have some ideas on what I'll need. Among items needed are a radio capable of receiving on one frequency and transmitting it on another frequency. To go along with that, I'll need a couple of deep discharge batteries, battery charges (one store bought, the other hand made), and a bunch of odds and ends of wire, connectors, tools, electrical tape, etc. I can spend as much on this as I want, or as the wife says, as little as needed to get by. She has agreed to this as long as I don't do it all at once. I figure I can get set up for about $600.

We have not provided a lot of communications other than checking in with various other ARES groups across the state and with local Hams to insure everything worked and everyone was available and listening. So, form our point of view this has been an almost non-event. I know that may sound cold and callus considering the death (20 I've heard of so far) and destruction (already several billion and counting). I certainly feel for all those who have lost so much and have been displaced. I hope they all get home soon.

Unless something extraordinary happens this will be the last on Ike. BTW, you may wonder what happened to Sunday's blog. I was off Sunday and did as little as possible. Got up late (7:30 a) took wife to breakfast, vegetated the remainder. C U later

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