ORCA DIGITAL NET

ORCA DIGITAL NET -California Grid Down Event 10/Oct/19Check-ins: 9
Stations:
KE6SLS Jaye Eureka,CA
KI7TPD Fred Cedar City,UT
W7ZAP Mindy Brookings,OR
W7HHE Brad Cedar City,UT
W6ADZ Darrell Reno,NV
N7SND Larry Cedar City,UT
WB7TZD Tom Vancouver,WA
K6ETA Steve Petaluma,CA
K7KY Doug Brookings,OR NCS

We formed this special-session net to support EMCOMM in Humboldt and Sonoma Counties in California.  Ops in both counties report an improving situation.  Tonight’s special session is the last for this event. Thanks to everyone that checked in or monitored the net.  We appreciate your support.  This small effort by ORCA is an inaugural occasion.  We supported Amateur Radio operations in Humboldt Co by gathering current wx predictions and projections and relayed them digitally on 160m.  It was a seamless application of the tactics and procedures we practice every week.  Should we be called to more difficult duties, I think we’ll acquit ourselves well.  County reports follow:

——— Steve K6ETA, Sonoma County,CA
Update from Sonoma County:  The Red Flag Warning has now expired. Power came back on in Petaluma with no significant fire events, however parts of the county are still dark. We expect the power to be restored for the entire county by end of day tomorrow.

Since there were no significant wind events there are many questioning this new system – but time will tell whether this was deemed a success.

We are thankful that no fires like the ones two years ago occurred and onlypower-related crashes and medical incidents were experienced. Businesses suffered many losses, but this was a good drill for a larger event such as an earthquake, etc. So people will hopefully be more prepared next time.

Anyway that’s it for Sonoma County!    <  K6ETA

————-Jaye KE6SLS, Humboldt County,CA
The electrical grid in Humboldt county failed near midnight, Tuesday, 8Oct2019.  Many residences were not notified or notified only a few hours prior to shut-down.  This ham learned about the planned outage approx 4pm Tuesday by OES followed by a “CODE RED” alert from our OES/Sheriffs dept.

I decided to top my fuel tank and found fuel station queues at every gas station.  As I passed a hardware store, it was obvious there were many angry people trying to buy supplies and supplies had run dry or very limited.

This ham notified every person I had a phone number for in Humboldt county and was amazed at how many people didn’t know of the shut-down event.  I hope I helped them with manual notification.

Fellow ham ke6hec came over and moved my generator outside on grass.  Safely away from my home.

On Wednesday, there was no power.  Our linked repeaters were full of hams wanting info.  One popular radio station, KHUM 104.3 was on air and broadcasting real time news reports and taking calls. They determined that we had a few tribal fuel stations/convenience stores on back up power.  I learned we had a temporary oxygen machine recharge station from Public health–critical information.  I passed this to KHUM.

My verison phone had 100% service, other providers were hit and miss.  Many people with the low income   gs” has no service, but only access to 911.

Our internet provider, Suddenlink Communications, failed immediately.  This provider also sells “phone service” which obviously failed.  Only AT&T phones continued to work. Our Emergency services handled the crisis well.  Law enforcement had about 25% higher call rate, mostly due to crashes at intersections with failed traffic lights.
Hams using our linked repeaters were notified that our controlling linked repeater had no back up power and was now limited to the life of it’s back-up battery.  Calls to limit use seemed to not register with many hams.  This ham made it a point to be very “direct” at moving callers off linked system to simplex. Unfortunately, many hams don’t have simplex frequencies programmed or only using HT’s.  These stations will need more mentoring so that they can understand the importance of an outside “gain” antenna and the use of simplex.

Many hams provided amazing services, including km6liq <Carl> who built an emergency battery/inverter for a woman who’s oxygen machine had failed.  He litterally saved her life.

Many lessons to be learned.  This ham has a laundry list of improvements to the radio shack and emergency back up plan.  My station tower is less than one week old and I am very grateful that I was able to complete the project before all this happened. Also TU for nx6dx, k7ky & w7zap for helping with traffic and using 75 and 160M for digital qso.  You guys ROCK.

Currently, there are still some outages in our county and many other counties to the south of Humboldt are still in full grid failure.
Thank you, 73 Jaye ke6sls
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This concludes the special-session ORCA net. The sked is cancelled.  73 Doug K7KY