The post’s emergency communications center helped people escape the community during the wildfire.
As the Palisades Fire made cellphone and other communication difficult, if not outright impossible, the emergency communications center at Post 283 came in handy.
“When the fire happened, they were actually coaching and helping people get out of the community, until the repeater burned down a few blocks over,” said Post 283 Commander Joe Ramirez. “It actually served a really, really important purpose, being one of the only ways to communicate.”
Hank Elder was Squadron 283 commander when the ham radio setup took place last year.
“After they rehabbed the facility, they decided to go ahead and build the actual emergency communications center, which is manned by mostly Sons of The American Legion members,” Elder said. “They meet once a month and they go through all the equipment to make sure it’s up and running. I’d say officially it’s been up about six months.”
The ham radio system has a gas generator and a battery backup, “so it is designed for this exact catastrophe,” Elder said.
Ramirez acknowledged some chuckles when the system was first put in.
“If you look into the room, you’re looking at equipment that looks like, you know, was designed and made in the 1970s. And you have a little handheld, it’s got this curly wire to the machine; it just looks dated,” Ramirez said. “But it was a real smart thing to do to get that up to code, up to standard, and kind of kept it up.”
Elder said, “The repeaters which are on top of the facility are being used by the community to use their ham radios to communicate with one another throughout the area. So that’s how we’ve kept in touch with one another in that regard. …
“Who would have thought when we put this in motion that it would be of use so quickly?”
- Emergency