Wahkiakum ARC emergency commission activated

Monday night two minutes after the power outage started the Wahkiakum County Amateur Radio Club emergency communications network was activated using the Incident Command System protocol (W7ERY Ron, WA6TTR Gordon, KG7WSQ Jim, KC7IVJ Dale and KE7IHH Larry)

Within 10 minutes we had five more stations on our county emergency simplex frequency of 145.55 mHz (K7SH Steve, KB7AJY Jean, KI7YMM Peter, AE6DI Mark, AE7RD Dave). We quickly determined that Cathlamet, Elochoman Valley and Puget Island were out. So, within 10 minutes we had a total of 10 amateur radio operators onboard from across the county and had determined that the east end of the county and Rosburg were also out. We had also determined that the Oregon side of the river, Naselle, Pacific County and Cowlitz County all had power.

In addition to monitoring our simplex frequency we had stations monitoring county Sheriff and Fire, and Pacific County and Cowlitz County commissions. Within 30 minutes of the start of the outage we had determined that the issue was (probably) at a substation link between Bonneville Power and Wahkiakum PUD. A few minutes later we officially closed the net, but most of us continued monitoring until power came back on.

If you would like to learn how to be "in the know" please come to one of our meetings. We meet Tuesday mornings 9:00 a.m., at the River Street meeting room, except the second Tuesday of each month when we meet in the evenings at 5:30, also at the River Street meeting room.