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.
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