At Home for the Winter
Mike Murphy, KD7PUF, Culpeper County, Virginia

This presentation is titled “At Home for the Winter.” The title is ironic because while many of you are getting ready for winter in Virginia, I generally spend my winters in Puerto Rico.

But that contrast raises an interesting question: What does it mean to be prepared for an emergency when your home, your family, and your communications may be spread across different places?

Emergency preparedness starts with recognizing that emergencies don't always happen where we expect them, and communications don't always work when we need them most.

Virginia winters can bring ice, snow, power outages, and fallen trees. In Puerto Rico, we have hurricanes, heavy rain, flooding, and disruptions to electrical power and telecommunications. The hazards differ, but the underlying problem is much the same: when ordinary communications fail, how do we get information to the people who need it?

That's where emergency communications, including amateur radio, can play an important role.

First, we need to be prepared ourselves. That means keeping our radios in working order, keeping batteries charged and backup power ready, knowing the repeaters and frequencies we may need, and having a plan for operating when our home internet or cellular service is unavailable.

Second, we need to know how to communicate with others. A radio is useful, but a radio operator who doesn't know local procedures, frequencies, or emergency net practices may not help when a situation becomes serious. Regular practice and participation in nets help turn equipment into a reliable communications resource.

Third, we need to think beyond our own homes. Emergency communications are about passing accurate information between people, neighborhoods, and emergency organizations. That means listening carefully, keeping messages clear and concise, reporting what we know rather than what we assume, and following established procedures.

My own experience after Hurricane Maria in 2017 brought home the importance of emergency communications in a very personal way.

Within a day or two after the hurricane, I could see the NOAA satellite images of my brother's home on the island of Vieques. But seeing his home and knowing how to communicate with him were two very different things.

Family members were eventually allowed a 20-second satellite phone call to reach loved ones. Eleven days after the hurricane, I finally spoke with my brother. It was a short call… and then he was gone.

That experience taught me that having information is not the same as being able to communicate. It also led us to rethink how we organize emergency contact information. We now use green, yellow, red, and black bed sheets—the familiar colors of triage—to signify family members’ health and welfare status. The goal is to make essential information easier to find and understand when time is critical.

On Vieques, we have taken emergency preparedness a step further by establishing multiple resilience centers equipped with food, water, tools, and amateur radio equipment. These centers are solar-powered, so they can operate independently of the electrical grid and provide community resources when normal services are disrupted.

My winter routine reminds me that preparedness shouldn't depend on a particular address. Whether I'm in Virginia or in Puerto Rico, I need to understand the local risks, know what resources are available, and be ready to adapt if the usual systems go down.

And there's one more important point: emergency communications are a team activity.

We build the relationships and skills we may need during an emergency long before the emergency happens. We practice, we learn from one another, and we make sure our equipment and procedures are ready.

So, “At Home for the Winter” may be an ironic title for me. But perhaps home is less about where we spend the winter and more about where we can be useful, prepared, and connected.

The real test of emergency communications isn't whether we can talk when everything is working. It's whether we can help people stay informed when it isn't.

Thanks for the opportunity to share the Briefing tonight. Please let us know if you would like to present an EmComm Briefing or request a topic to be shared.

73 from KD7PUF

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