http://www.heraldnet.com/article/201002 ... .disastersLAKE STEVENS — When people across the country turned their attention to TV screens broadcasting news from Haiti after the quake, Frank Remington turned on his amateur radio.
A network providing emergency communications for the Salvation Army called out for volunteers to help handle emergency messages from the country.
Remington, 68, a skilled radio operator with more than 40 years of experience, was up for the challenge.
Meanwhile, voices were coming through, making contact with Remington. A priest off the coast of Haiti. A search and rescue team from South Africa whose plane just landed in Port-Au-Prince. A doctor who was looking for an armed guard to help a nurse deliver insulin for a diabetic patient.
Staying tuned in from his Lake Stevens home, the retired Boeing worker wondered what would happen if the unspeakable happened right here in Snohomish County.
“It makes you wonder, how prepared are we,” he said. “When all else fails, amateur radio operators are going to be the ones to supply communications.”
Remington is part of a specially trained group that works directly with the county’s Department of Emergency Management to help with search and rescue operations and other missions in case of disaster.
Few people know that hospitals and city halls are equipped with a radio, he said. It can be a lifeline in an emergency. Remington has a generator and his car is equipped with a radio transmitter. A special license plate bears his call sign, a unique code issued to ham radio operators. If a crisis hits home, he will be ready.
Amateur radio operators, or hams, have to be licensed with the Federal Communications Commission. Remington first got his license in 1961. As a young boy, he lived next door to a ham and became interested in the hobby.
His office reflects more than a century of electronic and radio communication equipment. Black-and-white photos show Remington as a young man with his first radios. A wooden “K7GSE,” his call sign, is proudly displayed atop his radio system, which he controls through a laptop.
He also has telegraph keys, most of Remington’s collection dates back to the Civil War. Boxes and boxes of special postcards from people he talked to across the world are stored in the room. He’s chatted with people in Japan, Russia, South Africa and some 200 other countries.
He connected military service members overseas to their families in the United States. He talked to researchers in Antarctica. He even talked to an astronaut orbiting the Earth.
“It was kind of neat,” Remington said.
Katya Yefimova: 425-339-3452,
kyefimova@heraldnet.comTo learn more
To get involved with the Snohomish County Hams Club, go to
http://www.wa7law.com.
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