Ham EMCOM is mostly useful for relaying "Bill Jones says he's okay"-type traffic but otherwise it's just a LARP.
I don't think amateur is very useful for most SAR-- it's odd that you guys keep bringing it up. You guys can provision for typical needs; amateur is a benefit because of its elasticity.
> but otherwise it's just a LARP.
Don't be a dick. I think CERTs are important, and amateur radio is the lifeblood of CERT in many areas.
Doctrine here in Santa Clara County is that it's for things like:
- getting initial information and assessments from earthquakes in the first 20 minutes (a couple hundred people trained popping on nets saying modified Mercalli numbers and reporting the most urgent needs for assistance near them).
- coordinating distribution of relief supplies ("we need 100 more flats of water bottles at site GR2")
- medium priority traffic between hospitals when other communications systems fail (coordinating transfers, etc)
- handling all the low priority traffic from large festivals and events to keep primary communications systems clear (so a town's EMS dispatch doesn't need to talk about boo-boos, and so that event organizers don't need to try and talk through police dispatch)
- additional eyes and ears for police and fire
- locating anyone (inadvertently or deliberately) disrupting emergency communications
Would stuff be OK without the above? Sure. But it works a bit better with all that.
Cell phone networks will be down or at capacity when disaster hits.
Public safety networks will mostly be up, but they only have so many officers, etc.
> As a counterpoint, I once was involved with a backcountry emergency where, at a certain point, it made sense to have a non licensed person on a radio. We actually had the local grump hop on and tie up the frequency chastising them for using the radio. That felt very in line with the ham community.
I have said some negative things about the community here, but I haven't seen anything like that. We all pass an exam that makes it clear anyone can use any frequency in an emergency, and we all also should know that we can let unlicensed people under our supervision use our radio in non-emergencies. (With some exceptions).
> but Hams also like to overstate just how essential they are in these situations
That was my original point that you replied to, but your response felt too strong: I believe there is definite utility from emcomm, but it is not essential.