Hams help out after hi-tech system fails

On Easter Thursday, vandals cut a vital fibre-optic cable bringing down telephone services, mobile phone and internet services in San Francisco’s South Bay Area of California.

It stopped telephone, mobile phone and internet services. Affected were 50,000 residents, many businesses were forced to close their doors and the emergency 911 system was not available for most of the day.

Within an hour of learning of the outage, police vehicles were dispatched to knock on the pre-dawn doors of members of the local emergency response team.

Everything went to plan and radio amateurs were quick to activate to provide communications between the most affected areas of the outage.

Officials are praising ham radio operators, not only for their quick response, but also for coming through when state-of-the-art technology failed.

Proving once again -
When All Else Fails, Amateur Radio Works.

The ham radio operators became the eyes and ears of police and fire services on the streets. No deaths or injuries were reported related to the outage.

The Telecommunications company AT&T has posted a $250,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the person or persons responsible for the crime.


Jim Linton VK3PC

Wireless Institute of Australia