Ham Radio--Sole Link With Jamaica : Hurricane News Relayed to U.S.

This time, the phone call Gordon West made to a complete stranger was good news.

“Martha’s OK and her cat’s OK,” West told Nancy Smith of Newport Beach.

Sitting in the office of his Costa Mesa home, ham radio operator West had just relayed the message from Jamaica that Smith’s vacationing friend had survived Hurricane Gilbert, which struck the island this week.

“Oh, that’s great!” said a relieved Smith, who yelled out the news to some other people gathered in the background.

West, a ham radio instructor at Orange Coast College, is one of dozens of amateur radio operators in Orange County who have taken off work the past two days to relay news of friends and relatives who were caught in the hurricane when it roared across Jamaica on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, killing at least 9 people and leaving an estimated 500,000 homeless in the Caribbean nation of 2.3 million.

With telephone lines down on the island, ham radios are the only way Americans stranded in Jamaica have of letting worried loved ones know that they are all right. People like West receive the messages from ham radio operators in Jamaica and, in turn, relay them to friends here.

Tens of thousands of volunteer ham enthusiasts are assisting in the message effort throughout the United States, as they do whenever disaster strikes a part of the world. The ham radio operators served as a crucial communication link after Mexico City’s big earthquake in 1985, and most recently have been assisting in the communications effort from Wyoming’s Yellowstone Park, where more than 900,000 acres of forest land have burned.

If Hurricane Gilbert hits the U.S. Gulf Coast, as it threatens to do after clearing Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, the ham radio operators will again deploy to relay communications from the afflicted area.

When there is not disaster, West said, the ham operators regularly practice their message-relaying skills. Most are members of either the American Radio Relay League or the International Amateur Radio Network. There are approximately 450,000 ham operators in the United States, licensed by the Federal Communications Commission.

So far in Jamaica, West said, almost all of the messages being relayed involve good news. That news is transmitted from the Jamaican mainland via the radio code “1,” which means, “Everyone safe here. Please don’t worry.” Fortunately, West added, he has not had to relay a code “13,” which indicates a medical emergency exists, or a code “14,” which means, “Situation becoming critical.”

Most of the messages are coming from the Jamaican capital of Kingston, where many of the vacationing Americans are staying in hotels. Although messages can be relayed out of Jamaica, West said that no messages can be transmitted there because telephone communications within that country were disrupted by the storm. Without telephones, he added, there is no way to locate individual parties.

There was no communication at all from Jamaica while the hurricane was swirling across the island. The last dispatch from the ham radio operators who mobilized themselves in that country before the storm was that they were headed in their vehicles for higher ground, West said.

Once the storm had passed, the ham operators drove back to the coastal areas and broadcast to the world the first reports of the devastation they found. Using hand-held transmitters powered by automobile batteries, they also began relaying to the United States hundreds of messages from American vacationers, as well as Jamaicans with contacts in America, West explained.

Although the Jamaican broadcasts can be heard on shortwave radios as far away as Costa Mesa, the signals are picked up most clearly on America’s East Coast. Ham enthusiasts there, consequently, are responsible for transmitting the messages to other parts of the United States where individual ham operators like West can pick up a phone and dial the person who is supposed to receive the message.

“Let me tell you, you hear a lot of cheers and tears when these messages are passed,” West said.

As of late Wednesday, West had relayed five messages. Other ham operators have stayed up all night relaying as many as 50 and 60 messages apiece, dialing telephone numbers all over California at their own expense.

Under FCC guidelines, the ham operators cannot accept reimbursement for their expenses, nor can they accept gifts or money for services rendered. Their work, thus, is strictly voluntary, and they provide their own equipment. The equipment ranges from a $300 hand-held receiver to the $10,000 bank of radios, computers and instruments that West operates in a room of his home.

Law enforcement officials credit the ham operators with providing an invaluable service.

“When all communications are down, usually the only communications are through the ham operators,” said Sgt. Charles Norman of Orange County Communications.