HDSCS Celebrates 25 Years
How We Started, How We Grew, and How We're Celebrating
Everybody knows that Amateur Radio operators can get messages through when other forms of communications fail, if they're in the right place at the right time. But how can ham operators best serve the emergency communications needs of hospitals, and being sure that they indeed are in the right place at the right time? That question was on the mind of April Moell WA6OPS in the fall of 1979. She was in her third year as a ham radio operator and had already found a way to use her hobby as a therapy tool for patients in the Rehabilitation unit where she was Direction of Occupational and Recreational Therapy. But what if there were a big disaster, such as an earthquake, that caused physical damage to the hospital and interrupted communications with the outside?
When she received an internal memo announcing the facility's participation in an upcoming area disaster drill, April contacted the Administrator and requested a meeting to discuss possible involvement by hams in the Orange County Amateur Radio Emergency Service. A few days before that meeting was to occur, a glitch in switchboard equipment took all of the hospital's phones offline. April used her portable two-meter transceiver to call for assistance on the designated ARES repeater and was fortunate to get some prompt response.
The hospital administrators were so impressed by hams' ability to help maintain communications that they contacted local press. The story below appeared in the Fullerton News-Times, a newspaper that is no longer published. Similar stories ran in the Fullerton News-Tribune, the La Habra Star-Progress and the Brea News-Times.
The lessons learned from the phone failure and the drill were simple but profound: Hospital employers with ham licenses can't do it alone, and it isn't enough to just have a ham's phone number in the hospital's Rolodex. Another important lesson was that it doesn't take a widespread disaster such as an earthquake, tornado or hurricane to cause a communications failure that puts patients at risk. A switchboard outage presents just as much of a communications disaster for the affected hospital as a natural calamity does.
April realized that for effective Amateur Radio support to hospitals in all kinds of communications failures, there needs to be a dedicated group of non-employee ham operators who drill regularly with the hospitals and who set up a robust alerting system. At the 2005 HDSCS Orientation and Review Workshop, she explained how that came about: "We have to give thanks to the late Pat Fyler, R.N. Pat was the St. Jude Emergency Department Supervisor, as well as chair of the hospital's Disaster/Safety Committee. She wanted to know more about ham radio and its role in emergency communications. She thought it was really neat that people came in with their own portable equipment, and wanted to incorporate this into the disaster plan. That planted the seed."
April continues, "Next thing I knew, St. Jude was preparing for the next disaster drill and Pat invited me to the planning meeting of what was then called the Brown Net hospital grouping. I had been well schooled to spread the word about Amateur Radio, so I went in there and met with my hospital and six others. After I talked at length about how wonderful Amateur Radio is, the representatives from all six came up and asked how they could get ham radio support, since there was no one like me working at their facilities.
"One of the representatives was from Canyon General Hospital, now Kaiser-Anaheim, which is near the extreme eastern boundary of the county along the Santa Ana River. He came up to me and said, what happens in a big emergency like a phone outage when the phones are down and there is no way of getting hold of you. Who will think of our hospital way out here? Who will remember us?
"I contacted Ralph Swanson WB6JBI, who was the ARES Emergency Coordinator for Orange County at the time. We met to figure out how to put together an ARES hospital support group. We created weekday and nighttime/weekend call-up lists for each of the hospitals. We came up with the Core Team concept of automatic activation for emergencies that might prevent the hospitals from being able to call us. It took off from there. Ralph is still an active member of the group."
As hospital representatives talked to one another about their ham radio support, interest in our mission grew. One by one, more hospitals asked support from HDSCS. By 1994, all Orange County acute-care receiving hospitals had agreements in place and Amateur Radio communication support had been written into the county's emergency mass-care plan.
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This page updated 7 July 2006
As part of the 2005 annual EMS Week, HDSCS had a display in the annual Orange County Emergency Medical Services Tailgate Celebration under the Big A prior to the Angels-Royals baseball game on Saturday, May 28, 2005. In the upper inset, April WA6OPS represented HDSCS and was recognized in the pre-game ceremonies behind home plate. In the lower inset, HDSCS was congratulated on the JumboTron twice during the game. The Angels won the game 14-1.