• William Feist

SATERN Activating National Amateur Radio Network For Hurricane Florence

NHQ, Alexandria, VA (06/28/2018) – The Salvation Army Team Emergency Radio Network (SATERN) will activate for Hurricane Florence at 1200 (CT) / 1700 Z on Thursday, 13 September through at least Saturday, 15 September.  On Thursday, the Net will end at 1600 (CT) / 2100 Z.  On Friday and Saturday the Net will continue in operation until radio propagation no longer supports communications or the Net Manager closes the Net for that day.

Assessment of the need for continued activation beyond Saturday will be made by SATERN leadership based upon:

1. The amount of Emergency, Priority or Health & Welfare messages being handled by the network.
2. A demonstrated need for continued auxiliary communictions.
3. A request from The Salvation Army or one of its partners to continue.

The primary missions of the SATERN Network will be:

1. Receipt and delivery of Emergency, Priority or Health & Welfare messages outbound from the impacted areas to be delivered to people outside of the impacted area.The SATERN Network will not be accepting Health & Welfare Inquiry messages to be delivered to people inside the disaster area.
2. Support of The Salvation Army if needed or requested.
3. Support of our partners, including emergency communications partners, if needed or requested.

At this time there are no plans, nor have there been any requests by Salvation Army officials, to physically deploy SATERN operators to the disaster area or to active incident sites.

The leadership of the International SATERN SSB Net, led by Net Manager Ken Gilliland (AG6SV), is developing a list of Net Control Operators and Net Relay Stations for this activation.  More information concerning this activation will be available during the daily training nets, through regular email Situation Reports, on SATERN.org and the national Emergency Disaster Services (EDS) website at Disaster.SalvationArmyUSA.org.  Amateur radio operators interested in participating can check into the International SATERN SSB Net during the daily Training Nets on 14.265 MHz (Monday through Saturday) at 1000 (CT) or during the activation period or by contacting the Net leadership team at WB5ALM@Outlook.com.

This activation is being initiated based on SATERN’s Hurricane Activation Protocols.  The protocol is for one or more Nets within the SATERN Network to be activated in the event of a forecasted landfall by a major hurricane (category 3, 4 or 5) within the area covered by SATERN.

SATERN is coordinating closely by email and conference calls with its major national Amateur Radio and government communications partners.  These partners include the American Radio Relay League (ARRL), the Hurricane Watch Net (HWN), the Voice-Over-IP Weather and Hurricane Net (VoIPWX.net), the National Hurricane Center’s amateur radio station (WX4NHC), the Civil Air Patrol (CAP), the U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force Military Auxiliary Radio Systems (US. Army and USAF MARS) and the Shared Resources (SHARES) high-frequency (HF) radio system of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (USDHS). 

That coordination includes support of each others’ programs with information and, when needed, personnel.  During the very active 2017 Atlantic Hurrican Season, SATERN was able to support both the ARRL and the American Red Cross with its national network when ARRL operators were deployed for both the Great American Eclipse and to Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria.  In turn, SATERN was supported by the ARRL, HWN, MARS and others with qualified radio operators to help keep the SATERN Net in operation as its own operators became exhausted from 32 days of activation in a two month period including 22 straight days for Hurricane Maria.

National SATERN Liaison Bill Feist (WB8BZH) stated, “Over the last few years, all of us in the emergency communications field have learned that no one organization can do it all.  We recognize that coordination and cooperation is essential, especially in large events such as has been experienced during these last two hurricane seasons and other events.”

SATERN (Salvation Army Team Emergency Radio Network) is an international group of Salvation Army Emergency Disaster (EDS) volunteers who are licensed amateur radio operators that support The Salvation Army EDS ministry with auxiliary and emergency communications.