[AARA] AARA Thursday June 21st FD Bulletin
Herman Campbell
kn5grk at lusfiber.net
Thu Jun 21 07:37:11 CDT 2012
This is part of the Acadiana Amateur Radio Association, Inc. (AARA)
Field Day Event. More bulletins to follow. This year our FD is more or
less geared on emergency communications. We invite anyone hams or
non-hams to visit our FD event as soon as the location is announced.
Glen Thibodeaux KF5FNP
AARA Field Day Chairperson
kf5fnp at cox.net
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*THIS IS A DRILL *
Thursday June 21st.
Hurricane BOHICA (Bend Over Here It Comes Again) is becoming less
organized and is now a weak CAT 3, but is still bearing down on the
Louisiana coast. The Red Cross has opened 1 shelter in St Landry Parish
and 1 in Acadia Parish. Food, baby formula, diapers, and water are still
in short supply. At the shelter in St Landry Parish one man is shot and
killed during struggle over crack pipe. Another man is stabbed while
trying to cut ahead of other people in food line. No ambulance was
available to transport him to area hospital, he died 3 hours later. LANG
sends in more soldiers to shelters for security. Area HAMs still needed
at newly opened shelters to provide communication to Health & Wellfare
nets. All commercial communications links are still down and a return to
service is not anticipated for at least six weeks.
CAP -- Recon flight was not able to complete its flight plan due to
engine problems, only Vermilion Parish was surveyed. Heading SE from
Port Arthur CAP's 172 followed the Louisiana coast to Cameron, Creole,
Grand Chenier, Pecan Island before turning NE to overfly Forked Island
and then onto Abbeville. Everything below Cow Island was still flooded
and they could not see any standing structures or power poles. They
reported White Lake looked like part of the Gulf of Mexico. The flight
was not able to make radio contact with either the Lafayette or
Vermilion parish EOC's and it became obvious to the crew why they
couldn't contact Vermilion Parishes's EOC in Abbeville. A line of
destruction about 1 mile long that was caused by a tornado and included
the courthouse where the EOC is located was the answer. Where the
tornado touched down there was total destruction, some bodies were still
lying in the open. A few people came out from the rubble when they heard
the sound of our engine and began to wave, some with just one arm,
others just stared at us as we flew by rocking our wings. The recon
flight circled the area trying to make radio contact with other aircraft
while they surveyed the remainder of the city. Kaboudreaux showed no
mercy on the city nor the surrounding area. Just as the flight was
approaching the Abbeville airport, which was also destroyed by
Kaboudreaux's high winds, the recon flight made contact with a flight of
blackhawks inbound to what was left of the Abbeville airport. CAP flight
reported the conditions of downtown Abbeville to the Blackhawk flight
leader. The flight leader was aware of the conditions, he said a couple
of ham radio operators that were in the EOC crawled out after the storm
and set up their radios using batteries from the cars in the area for
power. He said he even spoke to one to the hams on the radio before the
flight departed Fort Polk, the ham told him they practiced EMCOMM drills
many times before, and knew how to get a radio signal out on HF and VHF
even with the local repeater being down. The CAP flight informed the
Blackhawk flight leader their engine was starting to run rough, so they
were turning to a heading of 270 and heading back home to Port Arthur,
Texas. Blackhawk leader said they would have some medi-vacs heading
there too and would fly the same course just in case they had to ditch.
Oil reaches $350.00 BBL.
*THIS IS A DRILL *
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