[AARA] AARA Thursday June 21st FD Bulletin

[Herman Campbell]

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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