US Amateur Radio Emergency Service celebrates 75 years of service

The US Amateur Radio Emergency Service, ARES, will be celebrating its 75th anniversary from September through December 2010.

This programme of the ARRL has provided 'ham radio' emergency communications for agencies such as the American Red Cross, Salvation Army, countless Emergency Operations Centers and other responders in the worst of times.

Their specially trained radio communications volunteers give thousands of hours of community service for free.

The fastest way to turn an emergency into a disaster is to lose communications. In events from ice storms to Hurricane Katrina and Haiti, when normal communications systems were down or overloaded, the Radio Amateurs in the ARES programmes filled requests for communications aid.

The first mention of an organized Amateur Radio emergency response organisation appeared in the September 1935 issue of QST Magazine.