Disaster Tips for People COMMS

Most of us have and use cell phones. They ARE convenient as they do connect people rapidly when they are on the go! MOST OF THE TIME!  We often hear that in a wide spread disaster or general emergency when the voice network of the phones is overloaded that we should instead use the text feature as they have a better chance of getting through, RIGHT?     This may not be true all the time.

COMMUNICATION requires a few things to actually happen. There has to be a sender, a message, the medium the message travels through AND a receiver.  I think most of can agree on this concept. RIGHT?

Take 2 people standing in an open field 200 yards apart and facing away from each other to start out. Person A finds something of interest, turns around and yells at the other person B but the wind is blowing so person B does NOT hear person A.     Has communication taken place? There was the sender person A, there was a medium voice and air, but person B did not receive the message and did not even know it had been sent. SO, NO, there was no communication taking place.

As an example with cell phones say you type or talk a message, hit send but for some reason it does not end up at the other person’s phone – did you actually communicate? NOPE!

Over the last several days I have talked with many people who have texted friends and only some of the messages have gotten to the intended recipients. They have used a few different carriers so this issue is not isolated to just one cell service. They HAVE most likely been routed through a few common cell towers though.  We had it happen to use just today again with a family member. We texted and she did not respond. We picked her up and had been driving several minutes when the reply text came in. [at least it did finely show up].  People that I have talked with this week one of them said they had sent a group text and only half received it. I have had voice mail take several days to show up! I have sent something to my spouse sitting in the same room before and had it show up a WEEK later or not at all.

The point of all this is that you do not have a clue about the message if you don’t get it. And just because you hit send does not equal the other person getting it. Voice conversations may or may not be possible on cell phones for whatever reason, but radio communications [depending on conditions and range] once established you at least know that they heard you.

Cross ref

http://www.preparesurvivethrive.us/mt-saint-helens-39-years-later/