Campbell River and Area Much Better Able to Communicate After Earthquake:

Our region is now better prepared should it be rocked by an earthquake or some other serious disaster. In January of this year, Strathcona Regional District protective services coordinator Shaun Koopman wanted to form a communications team so we could make recovering from a major event, as he said at the time, "less bad." So he made a call out for people who wanted to get involved. He - along with some local radio operators -- scheduled a certification course and hoped people would show up. "After the article ran in the Mirror, we had so many people crammed into that room like sardines," he says. Over 30 people signed up, 27 people graduated, and now the newly-formed Emergency Communnications Team (ECT) has 17 HAM radio operators on standby should they be needed. "The first thing people are going to wonder after the earthquake is whether their friends and family are okay and let those people know that they are okay, as well. Now that we have this team that's devoted to emergency communications and we can get a little more infrastructure, we can set up family reunification booths, tables, whatever you want to call them, and you could come to us and say, 'I want to send a message to my Aunt Myrtle and let her know I'm okay,' and we could do that for you." And no, this symbolic Aunt Myrtle isn't going to need a HAM radio to get that message, because the communications team is learning how to make radios send messages via the Internet, so they can send radio messages to people's email inbox or cell phones via test messages, etc. "We're always looking for new members, but we've got a heck of a start. If you's have asked me six months ago that we'd have this kind of team in place right now, I'd have told you you're crazy. This group has definitely exceeded my expectations with how passionate they are about learning. If they had four more hours in a day, I'm sure they would fill it with this. It's been one of the greatest groups I've ever had the opportunity to work with in my years in this field."

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