October, 2013
On October 19th, we were a host location (one of several in the region) at Floyd Community Amateur Radio Station to a Simulated Emergency Test held from 9am until noon. The test emulated weather conditions that occurred during the Flood of 85 which was a result of Hurricane Juan and a low pressure system that combined. The ground had been saturated by four days of rainfall prior to the arrival of the major rainfall. The hardest hit areas were the Roanoke Valley and surrounding areas. This deluge brought record flooding in Roanoke and Lynchburg VA.
The main purpose of the exercise was to test the ability to provide radio communications to agencies that would be responding to an event of this magnitude. Normally when something of this nature occurs, there is loss of phone and Internet service. This includes both hard wired and cell phone coverage due to equipment overload even without hardware or infrastructure failure due to the flooding. Amateur Radio is an important tool to fill the vacuum left when disaster strikes. We tested our ability to tie together agencies with outlying locations and with other agencies locally and throughout the Commonwealth. We provided communications over spans of hundreds of miles from the east coast of Virginia to the far southwestern mountains. We operated on digital modes as well as on voice frequencies. Hundreds of messages were successfully passed, and appropriate “actions” were taken.
Members of Floyd Amateur Radio Society and FCHS ARC were in attendance, as well as outside observers from Floyd and the New River Valley. Licensed hams fine-tuned their skills, some participated in a simulated emergency for the first time, and others became interested in learning these communications as a result.