Woodinville Weekly - April 9, 2019

Written by David B. Clark

What happens when all of your lights flicker into darkness, the ground shakes, and your phone lines go silent? 

A group of volunteers that are licensed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as “Ham Radio” operators are on the job. The technical term for a “Ham Radio” operator is an amateur radio operator, but this group is far from in the starting stages of doing their diligence of serving the community together. 

“An example that is often in the news would be a rupture of the Cascadia Subduction Zone Earthquake where all cell phone towers, internet service, and first responder (police/fire/EMT) radio services have failed,” said WECT Leadership Member Jim Walker. 

In the July 20, 2015 edition of The New Yorker, the writer and journalist Kathryn Schulz had a piece published titled, “The Really Big One.” The piece which focused on seismic risk in the Pacific Northwest helped shake the inevitably of disaster into the public lens. The stories sub-header read, “An earthquake will destroy a sizeable portion of the coastal Northwest. The question is when.” The story won Schulz the Pulitzer in Features Writing in 2016.

Sponsored by the Woodinville Fire & Rescue (WF&R) district, the WECT provides additional support, aiding emergency communications in  the  event of a major crisis when all standard communications: phone, tv, and others, have failed. These good people have taken it upon themselves to dedicate their efforts to making sure the community has access to information. 

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