Actually you need several. One is just outside the
building. Someplace where, if the building must be evacuated, you
will all meet. You will know everyone is out, because they will all
go to the same place. If someone is missing, you know that they are
not just standing someplace else and you can take appropriate action
to locate them.
The second location should be someplace somewhat
distant from the building. This is where you would go if you were
physically restrained from going to the building. Perhaps a toxic
fume leak while you are at work. You can't go home, but you can
probably get to the second location.
Perhaps, if it is daytime, you
will all meet at the kids grade school. Each case is different. You
will have to think about it, but don't think too long. You can always
change them. Do make up you mind quickly and let everyone know. This
is important. Do it..Now...
After you have two temporary locations picked, you
can refine the process. Here are some suggestions.
Physical Location:
- Two or more locations
- One near, one at the edge of the neighborhood.
- Protocol for which one to use
- Decide which one to use when. It is obvious that if you need to evacuate the building, then you won't go to the kids school. Think about the probability’s that are unique to your situation and it will probably become obvious.
Message Drop
Consider a message drop. I know,
it is a bit spookie to think about message drop points. Kinda like
kids playing spy. But consider the following. Suppose you spouse gets
to the school, picks up the kid but for some reason needs to leave
and go someplace else. Could be a million reasons why. Sick kid,
unsafe at the school, needs some urgent supplies....whatever. They
just are not there. So what do you do? Wait? Run around and look for
them? Now the message drop seems a bit more interesting, right?
Actually it does not need to be what you think of as a message drop.
But first a pretty long digression into LOGOS. No not the computer
program, Logos like copy-write logos.
Story-time: A long time ago in a
universe far away, (well it really seems like that sometimes), I
started work in a research lab. Each engineer had the usual desk
with a drawing board and such. Each also had a workspace in the lab.
As I was being shown my lab space, I noticed cryptic signs above each
area. Three dots in a triangle. A squiggley line and such. I was told
that I had to come up with something like that and all my equipment
would need to be marked accordingly.
When it was my turn to clean up
the common work are, where we did group projects, I would put all the
stuff with 3 dots in the 3 dot pile, squigglies in the squigglie
pile. Sooner or later the 3 dots guy would show up and gather his
belongings. It worked really really well. No more “ANYBODY MISSING
A MICROMETER?”. Gee those guys were smart.
Mine is two offset vertical
lines. A refined version looks like this. It began as two smacks with
a cold chisel on tools, two magic marker swipes on things like slide
rules (remember them??) or sometimes two pieces of tape on a
component or prototype. This has worked well for me for over 50 years
now.
We will see logos again later under the category of storage. Now
back to your regularly scheduled program.
So what does this have to do with
Message drops? Well when the spouse has to leave, I know that three
small logos will appear on the back of one of the signs near the
school.
They might be magic marker, or scratches, pencil marks,
whatever. It will represent the spouse, the kid and if they are going
to a relatives place, or one of the other places for which we have
created logos, that will be there too.
Actually this is a trick that
everyone from hobos to spy’s use. They use it because it works. Or
the logos may be the kids and a special mark that means there is a
written message in a pre-defined location. That way I don't need to
actually go look for the container to see if there is something in
it. Crafty those spy's.
Sometimes it is quicker to use a cell phone or
other electronic means to communicate. For example, if you were in
Boston on that very specific Boston Marathon day, it would probably
be worth a try to use the cell phone. But as we now know, the system
was not available. This is not uncommon as during a disaster several
things happen to the cell system.
First, everyone tries to use it at the same time.
The system, which is designed to have a certain load capacity, just
crashes from the overload. Next, because so many of our essential
services like fire, police ambulance are now routed through the cell
system, they are given priority.
Actually we really don't know what
happened to the cell service. Here is an interesting (to me anyway)
article I snipped off one of the news services. Unfortunately I did
not plan to use it so I don't have any supporting information about
the authors (or copy-write either..oops).
One of the problems is that cell companies, unlike
power companies, are not required to tell the public where their
networks are down, or how many customers are affected.
Susan Crawford, a professor at Cardozo Law School,
says assumptions that competition would force the carriers to provide
reliable service are wrong.
"We assumed that cable would compete with
phone, phone would compete with wireless, and that therefore we
didn't need to have this whole super structure of regulation,"
she explains. "It turns out that we were wrong."
These problems are growing as more and more people
drop their land-line phone service. Currently, over a third of
households rely solely on cell phones.
"In terms of a permanent generator, that can
give you an extra day or two," she says.
The problem is, in some places after Sandy the
power was out for weeks.
Jamie Barnett, the former chief of the FCC's
Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau, says backup power aside,
there's a bigger issue here. As many calls move from copper wires
onto the internet, Barnett says, the FCC's role is question.
"The carriers have questioned whether or not
the FCC has authority over broadband, basically Internet-based
communications," he says. "Well, that's the way all
communications are moving."
Barnett says most calls these days — landline
and cellular — will be processed through the Internet at some
point. So he thinks limiting the FCC's authority over broadband would
be a big deal, and could mean a lot more of "can you hear me
now?"
Interesting clips. Keep that thought, the one
about things moving to the internet. Perhaps it needs repeating so
here it is.
“...most calls these days — landline and
cellular — will be processed through the Internet. ..“
We will talk about the internet later.
I find it interesting that after a disaster, it is
frequently possible to place a call to a destination outside the
affected area than to a destination within the affected area. That is
why virtual meeting places are so useful.
The most useful would be one or two reliable
contacts outside of your local area. A reliable friend or family
member that has a landline phone is good. Later when we discuss the
various Communication Conditions (ComCon) you will be reminded to
contact this person(s) when you first sense that problems are in the
future. Make sure they are still available and are in tune with the
situation. Just select someone that is both reliable and available.
It does no good to have a contacts home phone number if they are not
there when you need them.
Text messaging also works when voice does not.
Text messages travel via a different method within the cell system.
So if the system is functional, but either overloaded or restricted,
text messages may still go through.
There is a voice version of the text message that
is worth exploring if you have a smart phone. I use an app. Called
Voxer, although there are many out there. Just be sure your group all
use the same one and that they enable it when things look like they
are going bad. Voxer works sort of like a walkie-talkie.
You press a
button, talk and the message is sent to all in you talk group. The good thing here is that it is treated as data,
not voice. So the message can be broken up, stopped in a que and then
rebuilt at the receiving end. It is not instant. But neither is
Texting. Voxer is cross platform. Works well on android and Apple
products. And the group can be spread out anywhere in the world. I
suggest you give it a try.
No matter what technology you adopt, the intent
is to have a place out there “in the cloud” where messages can be
sent and retrieved. E-mail, Texting and more are all options. Some
work better for a particular group than others. Whichever you choose,
be sure everyone can use it. Some folks just can't seem to get the
hang of some systems while other systems seem easier.
Of course there is radio.
Gloria and I always (well almost always) carry
small low powered HT's. As you will see when we discuss range, these
will probably work well up to a mile and a half to two miles
depending on conditions. We have a specific frequency for direct use
and our own repeater system if needed. More on that later. However if
you are within range, radio is an excellent option. And if part of
the group are not ham's we will discuss other radio options later.
