Letters: Hospital Communications for Hurricane Katrina

I would like to add some comments to your recent series of articles on hospital communications.

I served LSU medical centers, known as Charity and University hospitals in New Orleans, as a radio communicator during Katrina in 2005, along with my spouse.

Before Katrina we participated frequently in hospital drills and other programs to educate ourselves about the hospital and its needs. We were well prepared with backup battery power and spares, both antennas and radios, to get on the air during a hurricane or other disaster.

We deployed to the University hospital campus 36 hours before Katrina hit New Orleans, so we were able to make sure everything was operating correctly.

Some have expressed concerns regarding HIPPA privacy laws: We provided health and welfare messages outbound for patients and staff that week, but at no time conveyed protected information in those communications.
- All such communications were at patients' request.

My spouse and I both are trained traffic handlers and net control stations.

We manned a simplex net for intercommunication among hospital personnel, both on VHF and an FRS channel, as well as HF for communication with other served agencies, which was our only reliable method of communicating outside New Orleans.

HF radio enabled us to effect some evacuation of patients we could no longer serve adequately, as well as to arrange for the delivery of supplies and equipment needed by boat as well as the patient evacuations, sometimes by helicopter.

Without HF communications capability that week we spent on "hospital island", we would have been severely handicapped in our efforts to provide for the needs of hospital staff and patients.

Although we had VHF and UHF FM capabilities we found ourselves using HF assets more because VHF/UHF frequencies did not give us reliable, timely communications with those we needed to reach. However, some UHF repeaters stood up to the challenge and were used by search and rescue, as well as others, but we were not effectively served by VHF and UHF circuits.

HF SSB was our primary lifeline to the outside world.

Thanks for your recent discussion of these issues in the ARES ARES E-Letter.
-- Richard Webb, NF5B, West Burlington, Iowa

Source: www.arrl.org/ares-el?issue=2014-08-20#toc04