I have recently become more aware of and generally interested in electronics and amateur radio, and it got me thinking. What advantage, if any, would there be to having amateur radio experience, over a simple disaster crank radio/flashlight, in the event of a major natural disaster or some other emergency that leads to a longer delay in power being restored? For the sake of argument, let’s assume you have a generator or battery bank to supply your own electricity.
If you are the one with power in your local community with power, then HAM is far, far, far more important than CB.
If your local community is out of power then you won’t really have many more people in the local area to communicate with, but with HAM you can reach across vast distances and manage way more resources between different local communities to deal with the crisis.
In a local community, radio comms is a nice to have, over vast distances it is critical.
When the problems are local, not over long distances, it’s more important having a local connection.
For example, during Hurricane Katrina, police band radio was being broadcast over the internet. The most heartbreaking call I personally heard from the stadium was an officer begging “Does anyone know how to deliver a baby?”
Getting that message out over long distances did not help the situation. Getting it out locally DID.