| Amateur Radio W4EZ |
The first thing we need to do is distinguish between an emergency and a disaster. Your cell phone may very well be a handy thing to have in the event of an emergency, such as being involved in a traffic accident--indeed, many Amateur Radio operators carry cell phones, too. But a disaster is something else again. A disaster is larger in scope than an emergency, and that's where the communication problems come in. There are only a limited number of cell phone circuits that can coexist in the same place at the same time, so there's a good chance that your cell phone won't work in the event of a disaster. Your urgent phone call may not get to be made because of all the people using the circuits for inconsequential matters. We hams would call this a situation with no communications discipline. Also, if the disaster includes a power outage, those inconsequential cell phone calls will drain down the backup batteries at the cell phone towers, and soon the cell phone network will be inoperative for everybody. The official emergency response community knows this, and we hams would not be surprised to find out that official disaster management plans might include disabling the cell phone network to everyone except recognized agencies. Actually, the telephone network was more robust and reliable back when everybody had wired ("landline") phones. Unfortunately, now even most people who still have hard-wired telephone service have cordless phones, which require house electrical power to operate.