Blackberry REACT November Newsletter
Quick Clicks
San Diego Fire lessons from the ARRL
ARRLWeb: Hams Activate as Wildfires Ravage Southern California, San Diego Area
One of the differences between wildfires and hurricanes is that hurricanes
pass through in a day, maybe two. The wildfires go on forever, and you
don't know where they are going nor when. This makes for difficulty in
placing net control and other operations centers, as the fire may
change direction with the wind. The article in the preceding link is a
helpful 'log' of what went on at net control during the wildfires.
Although our major threat in the San Francisco Bay Area is an
earthquake, there are always several fires from broken gas mains. As I
recall, most of the damage in San Francisco in 1904 was not from the quake
but from the following fires. Keep in mind that although the fire season
is during dry months, earthquakes have no seasons and you may face a fire
during the pouring rain after a quake breaks gas mains and sets adjoining
buildings on fire.
Change of Seasons
Is your go-bag still full of sunblock, sandals, and bug repellant?
It is time to change over to ponchos, rain suits, fleece, water
resistant shoes, and the like. You might want to add some stuff to
your car kit, too - candles for warmth, blankets, and a tarp or
other waterproof shelter.
Sunset comes earlier now. Much earlier. Have you checked your
batteries and your reflective vest? Be sure they are in good
condition for your inevitable late-night call out for a
search or accident or a flat beside the road. See
Being Seen
for links to reflective materials, batteries, and lights.
On strobe lights
We bought a couple of strobe lights to use at Burning Man to
let us find our camp more easily in the dark. We also thought a
strobe might come in handy after major power failures, earthquakes,
fires, and the like, so that we can find our home or other shelter.
We tried the strobe at a recent campout, and it was so annoying to
our neighbors that they turned it off. (We had put it on the dash of
our car.) That sucker is _really_ bright. I recommend having one in
your car as well as at home. How many times have you read in the
last few months of someone driving off the road in their car and not
being found for days even though they are within feet of the road.
A nice, bright strobe at night could well spell the difference
between being found in time or not.
Links to strobes are in last month's newsletter:
Blackberry REACT October Newsletter
Splints
I have had the experience of accompanying someone with a badly
broken leg to the hospital. The broken leg had been splinted at
the scene of the accident, and the splint remained on the leg while
preliminary examinations were made. The splint was made from
cardboard, and eventually the staff replaced it with a 'better'
one made from casting material. The good that even a cardboard
splint did was evident when it was removed. You cannot believe
how much pain it prevented while it was on. It made me a true
believer in splints.
I have no faith in tree limbs or other found wood being
around when a splint is needed - that wasn't the case in this
accident - so I took a look at splints on the Web and found
the following analysis of splints for first aid kits:
EQUIPPED TO SURVIVE (tm) - MEDICAL GROUP
(the entire page is well worth reading, by the way)
Splints for kits are available all over the Web, of course, so
here are a few links:
- Splints
- which has an assortment of cardboard, SAM, and wire splints
- Wire splint
- which is a compact wire splint
- Splints
- another assortment of types and sizes (fingers to legs)
- SAM splints
- from the maker of SAM splints, with a link to detailed
instructions; this site also has many more products which
may be of interest.
Although the "Equipped to Survive" site recommends SAMs over wire
splints for some good reasons, there are advantages to wire and
cardboard over the SAM, and cardboard works fine for temporary
situations where help is a short car-ride away. Considering that
we may be in an earthquake where help is days away (or longer in
extreme cases), I'd go with wire in a carry-around kit and SAM
in my car kit, but I'll keep my options open. It's a judgment
you get to make.
Emergency First Aid Kits 
The page at "Equipped to Survive" at
Medical Group
has an in-depth review of emergency first aid kits for survival
situations, and I suggest giving it a thorough reading. Links to
other suppliers are in our page at
Adventure Kits
where we also provide links to the other necessity in emergencies:
getting training on providing first aid.
Some of the courses are geared to what they call the wilderness
context, which is what I expect to be in if the Bay Area suffers
a major quake: no ambulance or other means to remove the victim to
a hospital, no 911, no help from uniformed first responders.
Novels to code
Chuck Adams is translating novels into Morse Code, according to
this Wall Street Journal article:
WSJ
(with the headline "--- -. . -- .- -. .----. ... -... .. -.. - ---
... .- ...- . -- --- .-. ... . -.-. --- -.. .") Mr. Adams is
downloading copyright-free children's books and converting them to
Morse code, which he then offers on his Web site:
K7QO's Home Page
along with other materials for learning and promoting the use of
code in radio>.
The Journal's reporter clearly has no clue: Adams send code
with a "key that he operates with a pinching motion."
Information on emergencies
Given the fires in Southern California, I thought I'd add a
couple of sites that provide information on what are euphemistically
called Critical Incidents.
RadioReference.com - Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference
Radio Reference thinks it's for people who listen to scanners,
and they do list frequencies for police, fire, and ambulances in
every place in the country you can think of. If you happen to be
in San Diego, for example, and have your scanner or receiver with
you, you visit Radio Reference and get the local frequencies and
stay on top of events. The site is run with a database backend, so
you can do incredible searches: Location by frequency, frequency by
location, licenses by location, state, county, and local agencies,
agency by city, and much more. The site also provides maps so that
you can see fire districts, airports, parks, and the like. Pick the
area with the Critical Incident, and you can get the frequencies
used by the responding agencies.
GeoMAC (Geospatial Multi-Agency Coordination) - Wildfire Support
This is GeoMAC - the Geospatial Multi Agency Coordination site for
wildfires. (It's in heavy use as I type this, so the page is sluggish.
I expect this to be the case with most emergency sites during an
emergency.) There are nine agencies listed as being on the GeoMAC
team, all dealing with fire or geography.
This site has Google Earth and NASA satellite imagery and maps which
show both photos and maps of the areas on fire in Southern California.
You can pick which fire to view, and different windows pop up (and under,
unfortunately) to show you different views and data about the the
chosen fire. Some of the views require that you be running Google Earth,
a program which displays satellite and map information on your computer.
GeoMAC has a users' manual in .pdf format that lives at
GeoMAC Manual
When all else fails
During the fires in Southern California, I heard on cable news several
times the request that people in Southern California not use their cell
phones, as emergency crews were using them and needed the lines free.
This was a surprise, but there it is - people use whatever means they
have in emergencies, even the people in charge.
Newspapers reporting on the recent Alum Rock earthquake said that
people couldn't call into our out of the area on cell phones for from
30 minutes to an hour and that landlines were disrupted for shorter
periods of time. Cell phone carriers said they were unable to handle
the high volume of calls and that people should not rely on being
able to use cell phones immediately after or during an emergency. That
bears repeating: cell phone companies are telling you that you should
should not expect to be able to use your cell phone immediately if
a large-scale critical event occurs.
There are some objections to this position, of course, but today this
is the position we find ourselves in. If we are ready for an
earthquake, perhaps this means we need an alternative to telephones
to contact family members in the area. If we need immediate contact,
then we need that alternative with us at all times.
Howard Zolty has posted a recording of the SVECS net following the
quake at
Net report
(a fifteen minute clip, 29MB), which bolsters our motto, "when all
else fails" by showing people on the air and passing traffic
concerning the damage (and lack thereof, thankfully). (I hope it
would remain this professional if there were heavy damage.)
Steampunk laptop
A reminder for those not interested: "steampunk" is a genre that takes
today's technology and backdates it to the Victorian age.
Datamancer's Steampunk Victorian Laptop
This laptop is an incredible work of art with brass and wood, along
with a large key to wind it (watch the video on the page) and a feather
quill. It has all the ports and a CD/DVD player, all in proper Victorian
style. The laptop has small legs and looks like a clockwork jewelry
case that you open and plays music for you.
Nice video from the Wall Street Journal with an interview of the maker
and better explanation of how the laptop (er, computational engine -
sorry) works and was made:
Peak into a 'Steampunk' Workshop
Capacitors replacing batteries
Now I know we're not all members of the Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers, but I'm sure we all read the IEEE journal
"The Spectrum." In the current online issue there's an article called
"The Charge of the Ultra - Capacitors"
(Get it, charge as in
cavalry plus the charge of the capacitor? What a laff riot those
IEEE guys are). Anyway, ultracapacitors are bein placed in more and
more stuff - busses in Moscow, cranes, garbage trucks. The capacitors
don't use chemistry to hold a charge, so there are fewer environmental
issues with them, and they can be charged while the truck is moving,
using energy that normally is wasted.
This article explains how ultracapacitors are used for intense power
drains to save batteries - zooming in your camera, for example. It
explains the difference between capacitors and ultracapacitors and how
new uses are cropping up when you need high peak currents for
relatively short times (rolling car windows up and down, door locks,
your camera's flash, and the like).
Events
Christmas Dinner
December 8 at 6:00 PM at the First Baptist Church, 1100 Middle Avenue,
Menlo Park. We will elect new officers at this meeting, so do drop
by. Dinner is pot luck. Good luck.
Updates
No updates.