Timely: Emergency Radio test in West Seattle

I made the west seattle blog!  West Seattle Blog… » Non-snow news: Neighborhood radio test - talk about timely!

That’s myself and some other neighbors from the nearby west seattle neighborhood associations and blockwatch groups.  We braved the chilly pre-storm air to map out signal strength tests and come up with recommendations for purchasing equipment and covering the “dead zones” that were encountered to ensure seamless communications during an emergency so we can relay infromation between affected neighborhoods.

The west seattle HAM groups are also likely to be reborn to act as a backbone in case of emergency.

And not too soon it seems as right afterward we were hit by the snow and wind and icestorms.  I had my radio tuned to channel 4-11 during the first early snowstorm in case of power outages.

Will have my radio tuned again during the next windstorms.  We only lost power for a half a second the last time.  And we just had our trees trimmed near the power lines in the alley since there was some serious arcing and burning limbs so that should prevent some of the recent brownouts too.

I would like to have known that the stores were completely out of eggs before I risked life, limb, and vehicle to get some next time ;-)  Will check the blog before venturing forth.

Oh, and the West Seattle Blog is one of the greatest resources we have for finding out conditions and emergency information.  They have lots of contingencies there to continue relaying information (many people keep up with RSS feeds on their wireless devices these days, which is another communications channel to keep in mind).  Even many city organizations are experimenting with Twitter as a means of communicating.

Cool!  Marrying new and old technology for emergency preparedness…