[austinthetaco]

Not sure why you're denigrating HAM radio folks. They have in fact historically already been useful and critical in emergencies, most recently in 2024 for hurricane Helene. Just because you don't see it happening doesn't mean its not. I mean RACES is even a whole thing explicitly outlined because the government realizes the value of some ham radio operators.

[walrus01]

It takes real money and infrastructure to build resilient emergency communication networks on a county or state sized scale. And HAMs just don't have it.

Go look at the budget documents for the tower sites and entire radio communication networks that support public safety networks (police, fire, ambulance) on a scale of somewhere the size of King County, WA. Properly engineered hilltop tower sites with well maintained generators, redundant radio links, etc. Amateurs just don't have the resources to do these things properly and are a distraction at best.

My opinion is not new or novel - the people who built the att long lines microwave network in the pre fiber optic era very rarely if ever had anything to do with ham radio. Persons concerned with actual mission critical emergency communication systems learn the hard way that amateur dilettantes just don't have the financial resources or time to do it properly.

If you want to build an emergency communications network, it's going to cost money in real equipment and paying for the man hours of full time equivalent employees to build and run it.

[austinthetaco]

You're moving goalposts here. They have already been involved in emergency communication numerous times, its not the most optimal emergency communication, but critical nonetheless because of it's decentralized and among-the-people nature. Some elmer with 80ft tall tower in his backyard sometimes has a better chance at communicating with random operators that are at the location of a post-disaster scenario. If you don't want to look at helene, look at 9/11 where they became the primary communication for some red cross, medical facilities and personnel, and even new york's OEM.