Members of the DeKalb County Amateur Radio Club participated in a state-wide emergency exercise on Saturday, October 4th, 2008. The state-wide exercise was titled “Tennessee Perfect Storm.” The exercise scenario was that there were two category 5+ hurricanes, one coming in from the Gulf of Mexico, heading towards West Tennessee, and one coming in from South Carolina, heading towards East Tennessee. Flooding, wind damage, power outages and road closings occurred during the exercise as well as, a partial breach of Center Hill Dam.
Local Amateur Radio Operators utilized local radio repeaters and then utilized their emergency skills for stations in point-to-point contact. Communications were also sent to the State Emergency Operations Center at TEMA in Nashville, Tennessee via wireless computer-radio access. These messages relayed the latest emergency status in DeKalb County, and messages were received back from TEMA.
Those local DeKalb County Amateur Radio Operators involved in the exercise included W3HKG – Bob Mitchell, W4OPJ – Russell Cantrell, KF4QNT – Kevin Neely, KJ4GCT – John Lester, KF4MGN – Randy Morris, and KC4GUG – Freddy Curtis – Dekalb County Amateur Radio Emergency Coordinator. The club would like to thank DeKalb County Emergency Management Director Charlie Parker and E-911 Center Director Brad Mullinax for their support of local participation in this state-wide exercise.
The DeKalb County Amateur Radio Club is an organization of Amateur Radio operators from DeKalb and Surrounding Counties and is an affiliated club of the American Radio Relay League. The next club meeting will be on Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 – 6:30 PM at the E-911 Center. Any person interested in Amateur Radio is invited to attend.
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