EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS
It started as a nondescript tropical formation off the northern tip of South America. Something about it caught the eye of Bobby Graves, KA5HAV, the director of the Hurricane Watch Net. Before going to bed on August 24th, he noticed some global hurricane models that looked suspicious. Consulting with a meteorologist at the Canadian Hurricane Centre brought concurrence that this was not a good thing to see. Long-range forecasts predicted landfall between Texas and Louisiana as a CAT3 hurricane — a destructive storm with winds 111-129 MPH matching the strength of Hurricane Katrina almost exactly 16 years before.
“Seeing this system had a very strong potential of becoming a historic event, I immediately alerted our HWN membership as well as a very long list of government and non-government agencies, numerous amateur radio nets and various amateur radio news outlets, as well as ARRL Division Directors & assistants, Section Managers & assistants, and Section Emergency Coordinators for the states of Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Sure, this system was still in the early stages of development, so, anything could change. However, when many long-range models agree something will be there days ahead, they are usually right. The question was, how intense would that system be?” reported Graves.
The National Hurricane Center began issuing official advisories on then-named Tropical Depression 9. The storm was predicted to reach hurricane status while it moved across Cuba, then gain additional strength as it moved across very warm Gulf waters.
“So, on Friday, I placed the Hurricane Watch Net on standby alert,” Graves continued. “This normally means a hurricane is expected to affect land within the next 48 hours. We had plans to activate late Saturday at 4:00 p.m. CDT (2100 UTC) on 14.325.00 MHz and 7.268.00 MHz. As it turned out, this was the right plan of action.”
Graves’ actions were not the only being taken. Four days prior to the historic landfall, Louisiana Section Emergency Coordinator (SEC) Jim Coleman, AI5B , began posting National Weather Service summaries on the
