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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 3, 2017)
OPINION 6A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2017 Founded in 1873 DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor JIM VAN NOSTRAND, Managing Editor JEREMY FELDMAN, Circulation Manager DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager CARL EARL, Systems Manager OUR VIEW SOUTHERN EXPOSURE In case of emergency, start here By R.J. MARX The Daily Astorian AP Photo/Ronda Churchill People walk near the Las Vegas Strip shortly after a deadly shoot- ing occurred Sunday at a music festival. No way to make sense of the senseless T here is no way to make sense of the senseless. On a Sunday evening in Las Vegas, a 64-year-old man rains death on an outdoor country music festival. Firing hundreds of rounds, he commits a well-planned massacre. Dozens die. Hundreds more are wounded, some critically. Thousands more — concertgoers, family, friends – will find their lives forever altered. To say the shooter’s act defies comprehension is to state the obvious. Millions of Americans own guns. Few use them as instru- ments of mass chaos and carnage. Millions of Americans are in their 60s. Few commit slaughter. Millions of Americans struggle with mental illness — murder is not a sane act, even though jurisprudence sometimes judges it as such — yet few resort to homicidal violence. And so, it is useless to automatically blame firearms or men- tal illness or whatever else for Stephen Craig Paddock’s butch- ery undertaken from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino. Yet surely, we can all agree that something is dreadfully wrong — deadly wrong — in our culture. Something enables mass violence to proliferate. Something allows humans to take out their societal and personal grievances with deadly precision. We exist in a culture that increasingly has become “us vs. them,” from politics to standard of living to personal vendettas. As for However, blaming anyone, from the president to the neighbor firearms, next door, will achieve nothing. they reflect Rather, we as an American peo- a societal ple must get it together … and bring ourselves together as one. truth. Bad How can we, as you and I things and everyone else, overcome the causes that impel some peo- come from ple to the madness of massa- good things cre? How do we spot the signs — presumably of social isolation carried to or of beyond-the-norm anger and extreme. unresolved rejection — that fore- tell impending violence? A lesson of the 2015 shootings at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg is that lots of people saw oddities in the days and weeks beforehand, but no one put them all together. Without becoming the Big Brother of George Orwell’s “1984” or the authoritarian society of Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451,” we — family members, friends, teachers, colleagues — must become better at noticing and better at alerting, even when we don’t know whether our little piece amounts to anything, Or whether there even is a puzzle to be solved by authorities. As for firearms, they reflect a societal truth. Bad things come from good things carried to extreme. Used properly, a fire- arm has a legitimate, worthwhile role. Used wrongly, a gun can become an instrument of evil. In our society, instruments of casual carnage are easily avail- able, from bomb-making instructions on the internet to high-ca- pacity, high-power guns that can be obtained illegally when not legally. More laws will not change that, at least not soon. Neither will new laws change our society’s fascination with, and glorification of, mass violence. Books, movies and video games celebrate violence as the perceived solution to one’s prob- lems and a measure of one’s machismo. Even if we cannot make sense of the senseless, how do we stop the senseless? Again, how do WE? S EASIDE — In case of emer- gency, start here. Ham radio is at the heart of our region’s safety efforts when the Big One hits. “We know it’s going to happen,” said Hal Denison, president of the Seaside Tsunami Amateur Radio Society and a licensed expert radio operator. “We’ve been training for that on a daily basis.” Amateur radio is the last resource in an emergency when there is no other means of communication. “That’s what we prepare for and back up for,” Denison said. “There may not be phones. There may not be cellphones. We don’t really know how many are going to survive. But we know that the amateur radio is running.” The more operators, the greater the possibility of having people who can help, Denison said. Local radio enthusiasts watched with great interest the response in Texas and Florida after a season of hurricanes and floods. “From a ham point of view, we know those were the only commu- nications down there,” Dana Gandy, president of Sunset Empire Amateur Radio Club, said. Broad-based community Radio operators in the region range from age 8 to older than 90. “They all jump in and work together,” Irv Emmons, a former communications professional and amateur radio operator, said. “If anyone has any issues, we all jump in and try to resolve them.” Terry Williams received her license 10 years ago when she moved to Seaside. She got hooked after making radio communication with a radio operator in Scotland. “I’ve been on the radio ever since,” Williams said. “I love it.” Since then she’s served as an officer of the Seaside Tsunami Amateur Radio Society and con- tinues to introduce other women to the hobby. The women hold a practice session every Sunday night at 8 p.m. and a “hams’ brunch” at the Uptown Cafe in Warrenton. A power boost Users find a wide range of tech- nology, from basic packages to sophisticated gadgetry. A hand-held battery offers low, medium and high power capabili- ties, Denison said. On high power, a battery will be dead in one day. Medium power provides two to three days of com- munications. Low power lasts lon- ger — up to four days — but limits broadcast reach. Capabilities are rapidly being enhanced, Denison added. Solar power, backup generators R.J. Marx/The Daily Astorian Ham radio operators Dana Gandy, Irv Emmons, Doug Barker, Carl Yates and Hal Denison. and car-size batteries can provide many days of power after an emer- gency event. One operator uses a bicycle power to generate power. A self-sustaining repeater site in Arch Cape operates on solar power with no connection to the grid, bringing coverage from Nehalem to Warrenton. Far and wide Repeater and EchoLink sites allow licensed operators using a computer or smartphone to con- nect to repeater sites anywhere in the world. Gearhart approved a repeater site at the city’s September City Council meeting. The site, including pole, elec- trical communications and equip- ment, is budgeted at about $5,000 and will provide amateur radio ser- vice from the Arch Cape area to the northern tip of the Long Beach Peninsula in Washington state. A site in Seaside at the water treatment plant has battery backup and two separate generator back- ups, Denison said. A remote message system site in Seaside, located at Seaside Heights Elementary School, uses a lap- top capable of sending emails over radio waves. Global positioning systems capabilities can provide specific information about a user’s loca- tion when other means fail, help- ing to identify victims who may be trapped or isolated. “If you get in trouble, and you have no other means of communi- cating, you can type in a code in an emergency with your exact loca- tion,” Gandy said. He said GPS capabilities have so far been sporadic, but will be brought into all of the county’s radio sites. Training Training in procedures and com- munication are not only essen- tial but mandatory, as all operators must be federally licensed. Amateurs are licensed by class, from the entry technician level to the intermediate general license and the top level of “extra class,” a distinction held by Gandy and Denison. “The higher you get in, the more complicated it is, but the more ben- efits you have,” Denison said. “You have more frequencies to operate on.” Gandy, a former information technology professional, said there are more than 600 members in the area’s two clubs, and the teaching group has trained more than 900 hams since the region’s 2007 storm, which brought the need to the fore. Investment is about $35 plus a $15 license good for 10 years. Denison teaches “everything there is to know” to pass the begin- ning Federal Communications Commission license classes. Club members help new hams get started, make wise decisions about what they purchase and give them hands-on experience leading to licensing, Gandy said. Carl Yates attended a class shortly after relocating to Seaside and earned his technician’s license. “I’m kind of a novice,” he admitted. “But I’m an example of somebody who can start from scratch and go from there.” How to train Clatsop County Auxiliary Emer- gency Communications presents a ham radio licensing class Oct. 20 from 4:30 to 9 p.m. at Clat- sop Community College’s South County Campus in Seaside, and all day on Oct. 21. A similar course takes place Oct. 28 in Astoria. Groups like STARS check in on a weekly basis by giving their names and information. A South County check-in — for the communities of Arch Cape, Seaside, Cannon Beach, Gear- hart and Warrenton — takes place Wednesdays. “It’s a great hobby,” Emmons said. “I’ve been in it since 1960.” “We’re all hams first,” Gandy said. R.J. Marx is The Daily Astori- an’s South County reporter and edi- tor of the Seaside Signal and Cannon Beach Gazette. LETTERS WELCOME Letters should be exclusive to The Daily Astorian. Letters should be fewer than 350 words and must include the writer’s name, address and phone numbers. You will be contacted to confirm authorship. All letters are subject to editing for space, grammar and, on occa- sion, factual accuracy. Only two letters per writer are printed each month. Letters written in response to other letter writers should address the issue at hand and, rather than mentioning the writer by name, should refer to the headline and date the letter was published. Dis- course should be civil and peo- ple should be referred to in a respectful manner. Submissions may be sent in any of these ways: E-mail to editor@dailyasto- rian.com; online at www.dailyas- torian.com; delivered to the Asto- rian offices at 949 Exchange St. and 1555 N. Roosevelt in Seaside or by mail to Letters to the Editor, P.O. Box 210, Astoria, OR 97103.
