On Thursday night, Dec. 12, many areas of western Massachusetts, southern New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine were hit by an ice storm. In some higher elevations a large percentage of trees lost limbs and in some cases whole trees fell down. Damage to electric and telephone wires was so extensive that many towns and cities declared states of emergency, and the governor of Massachusetts called on several National Guard units to provide assistance.

Friday, Dec. 13, Franklin County ARES was asked to provide emergency radio operators for a shelter set up in the town of Heath, which had lost all electric power and telephone service. The Red Cross sent several volunteers from the Springfield area to staff the shelter and prepare meals for National Guard troops that had been sent to help clear fallen trees.

The first to brave the icy roads, still littered with many fallen limbs, were the husband and wife team of Barbara and John Berrigan (KB1NOH and KB1NOI). They had to stop at least once along the way to push a fallen tree top out of the road. When they arrived at the shelter in the center of Heath, they found they could not reach the Leyden repeater using handheld transceivers, so they had to erect a temporary telescoping mast with J-pole antenna on top to allow effective communications. Their experience getting to the shelter was so hair raising they decided it was better to spend the night on the floor than to give any thought to returning home until day light.

Saturday, Al (N1AW) and Chuck (KB1NOB) relieved John and Barbara for most of the day. When Chris (KB1NEK) arrived around 6 PM to relieve Al and Chuck, he found that his handheld transceiver could not connect to the BNC connector at the end of the feed line to the antenna left by Barbara and John. Al graciously left his handheld behind so as to allow Chris to maintain communications.

Several hours later, Gary (KB1NNY) drove all the way from Bellows Falls, VT, to be joined by Amber (KB1NQJ) to relieve Chris. By that time some telephone service had been restored, but it was not clear how reliable it would be.

LESSONS LEARNED: Emergency operators should pack adapters so they can connect their transceivers to antennas set up by others. Alternatively, every emergency portable antenna carried by Franklin County ARES members should have feed lines with standard PL-239 connectors, and everyone should carry an adaptor allowing his HT to connect at least to a PL-239 connector.

In the aftermath of an ice storm, tornado, or hurricane, emergency response teams should carry some kind of crow bar, long pole, or saw, to make it easier to remove fallen limbs from the road.

Sunday, Dec. 14, we stood by on alert for possible assistance in the town of Plainfield. By the time that alert was canceled, we were asked to find operators to go to the city of Gardner, where at least 200 people had to take public shelter because of extensive power outage.

Monday, Dec. 15, Tom (N1OTS) Chet (N1XPT, Beth (KB1NQL), Chuck (KB1NOB) and Chris (KB1NEK) traveled to Gardner to relieve operators, some of whom had been on duty for four days with very little sleep. Chris was sent to the middle school, where 125 had slept the previous night. The operator who had set up his station there had put an antenna on top of a second floor roof. During the four days he had been on duty at the shelter, he had to leave several times to bring emergency power, or make repairs to the repeater being used. The repeater conked out a couple of times even during the day Monday.

Chet and Chuck worked alongside the emergency net control operator at the EOC set up in the police station. Tom was sent to the hospital to provide coordination for patients being discharged. Beth was sent to the middle school, originally transfer to the national guard armory. However for the first couple of hours Beth spent her time helping a school nurse who was taking care of several very frail residents requiring help with oxygen generators as they prepared to transfer to their homes or one more night in the shelter at the guard armory. The middle school was being shut down in order to make it ready to reopen for regular school.

LESSONS LEARNED: Never count on a single repeater for extensive emergency communications. Not only did the Gardner repeater fail several times during the five day emergency period, but repeaters in Paxton, used for emergency work in Worcester, and the one on Mt. Tom also failed for periods of time during the emergency.

Don’t count on the freedom to string a coax cable through a window or door opening. The Gardner police station has all windows permanently sealed. The net control located there was fortunately able to communicate with the repeater by placing a mobile antenna on a file cabinet. If the station had been as far from the repeater as the middle school, this would not have worked.

An alternative would have been to use a mobile transceiver set up as a cross band repeater, and left it in a car parked out front of the building. A cross band repeater would also have been an alternative at the middle school, where luckily the maintenance crew was available to disable an alarm and unlock the door leading to the roof where the antenna was set up.

Don’t expect every recently licensed operator to know how to switch frequencies quickly and surely when operating in unfamiliar territory. This takes practice!