Is Your ARES Group a 24-Hour Resource?

Emergencies have a strange way of either happening when people are asleep or at work. Or maybe it’s not that strange, considering that most people are working, sleeping, or both, about 16 hours of a 24 hour day. That’s two-thirds of each day when many people are mostly or totally unavailable.

That makes retired hams pretty valuable to ARES/RACES groups. Many older hams are available at almost any hour and have decades of valuable experience. But, they also have the kinds of medical issues that almost all of us already do or will eventually suffer.

The need to plan for (and around) those limitations is the focus of this story, told to me recently by an official of a served agency:

It seems the local hams in a community had been activated and were staffing an EOC and a remote location or two. My storyteller forgets the nature of the incident. Everything was working well until mid-day when thoughts turned to staffing a second shift during the evening and overnight.

A problem arose: The local hams, though capable, had reached an age where none of them could safely drive after dark! 

Fortunately, this was discovered early enough in the day that a mutual-aid ARES team—one that could drive at night—was summoned from a neighboring community. The mutual-aid hams worked overnight, replaced by local hams after the sun returned to the sky.

In retelling this story, I mean no criticism of older hams. I’m nearly 50 and have already had the lenses in both of my eyes replaced. The moral of this story is that ARES/RACES groups need to understand both their capabilities and their limitations, and plan around the latter.

Now might be a good time to ask around and see if your local team is really the 24-hour-a-day resource you believe it to be.