Prep Comms - 20 Years After Katrina: Remembering Carl (KB5WMY-SK) and Amateur Radio’s Role

Episode Date: August 29, 2025

August 29, 2005. Hurricane Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast, the levees failed, and the water swallowed entire neighborhoods. Phones went dead. Power grids collapsed. Families were cut off and 911 calls were rerouted anywhere a signal could land. In the middle of that chaos were volunteers — amateur radio operators who carried their share of the load when the systems failed. One of them was Carl, KB5WMY (Silent Key). In 2015, he sat down with me to share his story of working at the Bossier Parish 911 center after Katrina. Carl spoke openly about the calls he could help, the ones he couldn’t, and the weight of serving in those days. Now, on the 20th anniversary of Katrina, we honor Carl’s memory and service by replaying that full conversation. It’s a behind-the-scenes look at how ordinary people with radios made a difference when everything else went silent. vist www.prepcomms.com for more including the bonus audio material 

This is a special edition of the prepcoms podcast. I am your host, Caleb Nelson K4 CDN. On August the 29th, 2005, Hurricane Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast of the U.S. And over the course of the next few days, the levees in Louisiana begin failing as water-swallowed entire neighborhoods. communications locally collapsed 9-1-1 calls were rerouted to anywhere that they could land and in the middle of that chaos were volunteers from all over the world today we're going to talk about some local amateur radio operators in bozier parish Louisiana and how they did their part to hold the line when other communication methods

fail specifically we'll speak to kb5 WMI in just a moment you'll hear a replay of an interview I did with Carl back in 2015 when he graciously sat down with me for my show, Ham Radio 360, and shared what it was like to serve in the Bozier Parish 911 Center during those days. He'll talk about the messages that he got through, the ones that he didn't, and the toll that it took to carry on both. Carl has since become a silent key in 2019, but his story still matters. So today on the 20th anniversary of Katrina, I'm going to replay that full conversation. It's an honest, brutally honest, behind-the-scenes look at how one group of volunteers answered the call when everything else felt. And I'll invite you to visit our blog page as well at

prepcoms.coms.com, where you'll find an additional one hour of recording that Carl shared with me for the 911 Center from calls from all over the country over radio as people work to coordinate rescue and recovery. Again, thank you for listening. 73. All right, so we've got Carl McNair with us, Kilo Bravo 5 Whiskey Mike Yankee, and Carl is from Bozier County down in Louisiana. Did I say that right? Well, it's parishes in Louisiana. From Bojure, Paris?

That's correct. Louisiana has parishes, but it's the same as a county. Okay, okay. That was confusing. And what we're here to talk about with Carl today is the part that he played and the part that Ham Radio played in the recovery from her. King Katrina, and I remember that very well. I only had two kids back then, and we spent some time driving back and forth between Mississippi and Louisiana and South Carolina hauling supplies.

But I wasn't an amateur then, but I've heard a lot of stories, Carl, since that time, about the roles that radio and amateur radio played in the Katrina effort. But before we go there, I want to ask you real quick, what got you into amateur radio? Well, actually, I was interested in radio since I was about 12 or 13 years old, and I got into electronics and began by building my own 11-meter radio, a CB, which is sometimes a dirty word for the hams, but everybody starts somewhere, and I was a local React manager in Falls Church, Virginia, just outside of Washington, D.C. at age 13. I had my own piece of gear that I built. It was crystal operated it actually was a TV chassis when it started out so I was really proud of it

one of the few things pieces of gear that I've actually built in my life and uh it worked wow wow so that so you were you were involved in electronics for a very long time but it it wasn't that you were a licensed amateur until what time what year I got my ham ticket about 1992 I think okay I've been a ham for about 25 years I have and and you weren't one of these one day one day zero to hero kind of guys you were a tech for quite a while if I'm not mistaken that's correct I remained a tech for about the first 14 years and it wasn't easy to pass the test I was real familiar with electronics but it doesn't have much to do with the testing, even the current day testing to be a ham. It's more about

today, it's more about how and where you operate in general procedures, although they're rarely followed on the air by a lot of hams these days. It's more about how you should conduct yourself rather than about the highly technical world like most people think. Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, Carl, I think a lot of people, that may scare some people off thinking that, oh gosh, I'll never be able to get all that. But it's like we said time and again on this program, amateur radio is really an on-the-job training kind of a hobby, whereas you get licensed to utilize the frequencies,

but you really learn what you're doing by doing. Well, that's really at the root of what ham radio is, is to provide a bunch of technically skilled communicators for time of need with their country. and even the frequencies, they're all military, in fact, here where I am, right next to Barksdale, often there'll be convoys leaving out from time to time, and they'll be using the two-meter band. Oh, that put people all in a tizzy for a while there, but they have first claim to the frequencies, as long as they're not interfering with other communications, you just kind of hush up and listen and enjoy it or leave them alone.

There you go. They are the first claimants to the bands. right just have it alone everybody kind of takes for granted that they're ours forever but that's not necessarily the case yeah yeah so let's let's talk a little bit about katrina you you live in um in the bojure parish in in louisiana now where is that in relation to where the where katrina actually came on to shore near the past christian and the uh down there in the bottom into the state. Whereabouts are you located geographically in the state of Louisiana? In the very northwest corner of Louisiana, about 18 miles south of Arkansas and 14 or 15 miles out

of Texas, right up in the corner, 180 to 200 miles away from New Orleans area itself, although Katrina wasn't just New Orleans. The news covered New Orleans, but we had devastation all along the gulf and it wasn't just katrina by the way right following katrina during the same recovery period we had rita come through yeah rita although they didn't give it much uh it didn't have its own theme music on the news rita brought hundred mile an hour plus winds to jackson mississippi which is as far off the coast as i am here in fact it's father's hometown wow all right so so what is a man what is a man in a little town almost in Texas in the top part of Louisiana what is he going to how how can he help somebody on the coast of Louisiana after the

devastation that we knew as Katrina came through how did how did you play a part how did your operations and your skill set come into play well I was part of a group of communication training to be liaisons between the professional world of police, fire, and EMS, and the civilians so that the police would actually have more eyes on the ground during serious problems. I had had all the NIMS courses training and the FEMA training, so I knew the hierarchy and who I had to bow the lowest to when it came down to it. We were all still just until something happened, we felt like we were just,

filling a position in order to keep us busy with something. Well, that wasn't quite so. The morning that Katrina hit, I had actually gone to work. A sigh of relief, the news reported, everything looks fine, no major devastation. I got to work and was at work for about an hour or so, and just settling in for a day's grind at my job, when the phone rang and the local marshal, actually the assistant marshal called and he said carl we need somebody we're getting emergency calls it 9-1-1 and this was another strange part but we need somebody who knows how to handle that stuff and a little side note i had lived in new Orleans for almost three years and just recently moved back to the area.

So I went down to the local com, which is 911, but there are communications dispatch and everything in one place, and it's not within the city, as some law says, they have to be out of the city that they're operating for. So anyway, it's north of town a good bit. So I drove out there, let's see what will happen, got there in my work clothes, and got let in because it is a secure building. and they said, so you're what they sent to help us. And there I was with my little Hattie in my hand and a thumb drive in my pocket.

That's all I carried with me. It's all I needed. Well, I wasn't planning on any major outing. I walked in, and I had a station there with a small computer workstation and a radio that had already been set up by HAMS at the place. It had both HF and VHF, and that was a serious problem. since I was only a VHF user at the time, just a technician. So I got to my position and set up and I was talking and got everything,

got a net set up and said, you know, I commandeered a repeater, one that I had additionally already had tied in an ICOM radio at the house with recording capabilities on. I commandeered the repeater and said, we'll please use some of the other repeaters here locally. I'll be conducting net services here. And with the storm damage, a large percentage of the calls that were to 9-1-1 from New Orleans, Baton Rouge area even, actually were routed to our local 911 center.

And the people in there, the dispatchers, are wonderful at what they do, but they have a limitation to what area they can cover. with such detail. And there we go back to, I used to live there. I sat in and I knew the streets and everything and I set up my toys on my thumb drive, got things going. We had to backcheck when someone called in since there were so many false calls that came in. We took their phone number.

If they were on a cell phone, we said, what is your home phone number? And we would take their phone number and we would cross-reference it to find the address and at the same time, using Google Earth, by the way, we would not only verify the address, we would get a general idea with the street view of what the area looked like if it was low-lying areas and such. And, well, most of New Orleans is low-line. That was a real planning problem in the beginning, I think.

So we would check the area. We would get GPS coordinates because the other people that were there in New Orleans did perform the rescue, is search and rescue and search and recovery. They weren't really familiar with the area. And some places, street signs were beneath the level of the water anyway. So I give GPS coordinates, get verified that this call came from these people.

They are listed as living at this address, and that's where they say they are. So it cut out problems. It also cut out duplication. Each message I sent out both via Internet, I would even, email a center that would put it on HF, some people in Ohio, just volunteers. I would also email a center that was in the Pensacola area of Florida and send them the same message. Each message just got a number, basically started out with the month and the day, the day for date, and then the number of the message. They were over 1,700 that week. Wow. So you had come into this

Immersy Communications Center. Was this the first time you'd ever been in this building, or were you familiar with the building that's lay out and what would probably be expected from you? Well, I had been in it twice as we were setting up some gear. We had a pneumatic tower for local events that had communications radios and a repeater built on it. And during that time, we would go inside because it was hot out. And we'd look around the place. And I had training on a, what's best, described as an operator station because at that time most of the systems had their 800 megahertz radios but none of them had a common frequency each one would have their own set for the trunking and they couldn't talk to each other and we had this machine in there we could listen to all

the traffic going on at once and I think there were nine particular bands on this with the radios and if the marshal's office said I need to talk to the state police as the windows We just drag Marshall's office over and set it with state police and those two guys could talk to each other through the radio system, basically a repeater with multiple inputs and outputs, and we could select who got who. And you have to be careful with that because you can really cause interference, and the professionals don't like interference a bit. Yeah, they're not the amateurs, right? well they know communications they know brevity they know a lot of things that i didn't know going

in uh it gets hard to maintain when you spend so many hours talking to various people and talking people until they could no longer no longer talk i talked to many people until they were gone that really affects you but anyway you the professionalism they have to treat everything as a non-personal item it really seems hard but you have to isolate yourself from it in those things i wasn't able to do that right well you know i've even spoken to some guys that were down there with tree services and performing you know cleanup and those came those guys came back they were changed people i mean it was it was such a dramatic and traumatic event that it forever affected that person in some in some fashion i don't think anyone involved

wasn't affected in some way it was a major learning experience for everyone i wasn't trained to do what i did i was familiar with the radio i was familiar with how things were set up and of course the uh the the radio system i was actually trained on didn't have to do with the ham communications that I was performing and every telephone call that came in from what was an unfamiliar place with the dispatchers was given to me so I could do what I could to send it back to them and there was a major logistical problem VHF is good for maybe 50 miles and on a good day a tad farther if you got a really good setup with the antenna and plenty of power and everything else but at the other end there weren't

weren't any antennas. They were really a few hams that were capable of operating, so very difficult. And the shortwave, the HF spectrum, is for a longer. It bounces off the ionosphere, the F2 layer, I think. But it's for longer distance than this 200 miles we had. Only a very rare circumstances for NVIS, does it actually work at that close of a range? and I've been working with NVIS. I think I've got it down now.

At any rate, it's only good at a much larger, longer range. So what I had to do was I had to find a way to get the word down there. Either needed to talk to someone closer in and have them relay the message or I needed to talk to someone farther out. And so I set up Echolink, which was already in the equipment on my thumb drive, and you know when they saw louisiana was online everybody had to had to come in there on echo lake and let's see what well i was a scanner listener too way back when and you know it's exciting to hear what's going on and at least participate in some manner so anyway it wasn't long where

i had oh a dozen people connected on echo link and i asked if anyone had means of using hF and from locations in the northern U.S. And I got two or three volunteers, and one in particular was a recruiter. I think a marine recruiter. It may be Navy. I hope I don't get someone mad. But this man said, well, say,

I have a son who's with the Coast Guard. He's down there performing operations now. And, okay, well, I already had him tied in. and helping. And again, I would text messages over Echo Link to him and two other volunteers he had with him. They would get on HF and send it south to, in one case, one of the guys from the Shreveford area here who actually was flowing down in a jet to the region in Pensacola at the nearest base there. And he was performing the same duties down there and directing some. of the air traffic, or at least telling them where hotspots were that needed attention.

And there were some, some that didn't make the news. And I'm not going to go into the details, but it was not as rough as the news said in some cases, and much worse than the news said in many cases. The news had their own three music, and they showed a few bodies that was sad. But it was the same few bodies because they weren't allowed into the area where the real trouble was. So anyway, this messages got bounced around and eventually made it to where they were going. And my number system avoided duplication at the other end. And it avoided tying up what few resources they had because many of the calls I was getting were people trapped in addicts. And

if I didn't get some help to them soon, well, I had a good percentage, but not 100% on getting helicopter rescue to the right areas in the right time but the one young man that was down there on the coast guard vessel had a satellite phone and a satellite phone was a real saving grace in this thing because it could operate at any distance and through his father the recruiter in Ohio, we worked out where I would be able to call him and give him direct information and GPS coordinates of people needing desperate help. And so that really brought some continuity to the system. And this was things that we learned on the fly.

Nobody had a plan, use Google Earth and get GPS, call and make sure that it's the right It's not a crank call or it's not a duplicate call. These are things that were learned on the fly. Okay, I'll pat myself on the back a little bit. I didn't have to think long to figure these things out that we needed to be sure that we told them what they needed to know and we didn't tell them anything extra. And we needed to be sure we were right.

So, you know, a lot of times we think about as operator, you know I'll get my license especially new guys coming in they get their license and they're like well you know I can I've got a $30 balfing H-T and I can talk around the county and I'm good and if anything bad would ever happen well you know I can grab my H-T and everything's hunky-dory and that might be as far as they go and they don't they don't go any further with any type of training or whatnot and you know a lot of us encourage folks to define your niche in the hobby you know emergency communications is not for everyone i mean there's a lot of people who just mentally cannot handle emergency communications traffic and that's okay but if you are leaning that

way listen to carl through through this so far he's told us that he had the training he had been in the facility he had made himself known to the local folks who could call on him in case of a need and he took all that that all that he had in addition to like he says learning on the fly putting it all together and making it happen and and Carl you were you were like the other operators there you're describing whether they were in the the bojure parish with you or they were the gentlemen in Ohio or the men on the on the other end of the coast you guys were putting your training and your skill set together to affect people's lives in a very positive way and I think that's very important that we remind folks to listen that you know it's not just about grabbing a walkie

talkie and if anything were to ever happened, you're okay because you have a walkie talkie. There's a lot more to it than that. Well, I think one of the most important training, you know, I was a computer nut and electronics and everything and that really didn't play much to it. The equipment worked when I pushed the button as long as I knew which piece of equipment to use. Being so far away from the direct trouble, you know, we were isolated, so we didn't have much visual, although it didn't take me long to get the computer lined up where I could check

DOT cameras about the center. Oh, it's glass fiber, by the way. The Internet was working. Didn't have much power, but I could see DOT cameras, and when somebody called in, I could pull the nearest DOT camera right off the Internet and look and say, well, that area is underwater, you know, they're going to need some major rescue, or we need someone, you know, this area is dry. We can just send a truck over there to, you know, dispense a little help and pick anyone up that needed to be taken. Most of the people picked up by the search and rescue were

taken to the main airport in, well, not Destrehan. Where is that? It's just outside of the city on the north side. And it was high ground. Well, that's why they put airports there. It's closer to get the airplanes in and out. So anyway, it was a good high ground. ground area. They had plenty of place for people. They could care for folks and they could route them through flights as they needed to to move them on out of the area. But anyway, so we had all of these people that we had to get in the directions. I'll just say it was overwhelming. And it was 16 to 18 hours a day I spent there at the center. And when I wasn't directly there on a phone and with the computers and such.

I was at home with a cell phone they provided me with. Oh, boy. Every call they got involving Katrina, the New Orleans and Gulf Coast region came to me because they didn't have maps. They didn't have computer settings. They didn't have time to research it because they were performing. You know, you say, well, here he is. I'm actually in Boisier City and Boisier Parish is the county.

but right we're attached to Shreveport. And we had 40,000 guests come for dinner. Wow. People who were escaping the storm in front of and after it. And to say our area was affected, it rained here a little. But the real effect was gas stations, fast food, grocery stores were being stripped because they are not set up to provide. provide that kind of supply for that many more people.

They work on a need basis. Generally, every three days the food is turned over in the grocery store. Okay, when you get 20% more people in town, and I'll have to admit, when you see cars driving down the road with gas cans on top of them, a strap down, and you see people hanging out the windows, when they hit a store, they didn't just buy a loaf of bread. they bought everything they thought they might ever need

and so the locals were actually having trouble finding things like gas I had to I had to pay over $3 a gallon for premium gas which the station was doing something irregular then because average price was about $1.70 back then so anyway I had to pay an outrageous price just so I could get back to the center you know and I went ahead I filled up the car with that high-priced stuff to get there and just little things my recordings that I made which is part of the audio you have available those were not done as a matter of history they were done

to back check that I took care of every call that came in and we're going to listen to some of those recordings here in just a couple of minutes but first a break with mtcradio dot com visit mtc dot com today a great one-stop mom and pop shop for everything ham radio radios antennas power supplies wiring cable books and training materials microphones headsets and accessories find popular brands like mfj hail sound jet stream ldg alinko comet texas bug catcher radio waves and more mtcradyo dot com and authorized kinwood and icomd dealer mtc radio dot com So we're back with Carl, Carl McNair, Kilo Bravo 5 Whiskey, Mike Yankee from Bojure Paris in Louisiana. Carl, along with a mass, a mass of amateur radio operators contributed greatly to the recovery after Hurricane Katrina.

Now, you may remember episode one here of the podcast. We started with the Joplin tornado disaster, and our friend whose name just Cecil. Cecil Higgins, there it is, Alpha Charlie. Sorry, Cecil, I can't pull your call out of the top of my head. But we've talked about this before, and it's not just one man. It's not just one person. There's so many people working together, but we can't have five or six thousand individuals on the podcast at one time. We're bringing you a personal story from someone who was personally involved in the Katrina Recovery, and that is Carl McNeill.

Now, Carl, we've got some audio that we're going to bring in here in just a moment. to discuss the proposition what was going on at the time. And this is the prison call, it's the prison hospital call. We'll hear a little bit of that now, and we'll come back in just a moment and discuss that real quick. It's KB5 WMI. I need an HFOP who's capable of passing emergency traffic within the next few moments. That will be available momentarily. KB5 WMY-85JLH.

Wherever you can get somebody at its south with it, this is emergency. We were just speaking to them. They found a cell phone and we're able to talk here. I'll give you read her momentarily with details. She's working at it now. N5JLH WB5HXD. You ready to copy? Roger.

Roger ready to copy. Go ahead, Rita. The name is Michael. We have just had an immediate phone call to his family. The family is our victims who are here in Bojure. They called and said she had had a desperate phone call on a cell phone that is dying from her brother, who is a staff psychiatrist at the New York. Orleans Parish Prison. I do not have an address. It is the New Orleans Parish Prison.

They evacuated all of the prisoners. He is a physician there. They left the physicians. He said, we need air lifting. We are dying. Okay, just New Orleans Parish Prison. There's no address or anything like that. Okay, and that's his name is Michael Hicken. His name is Michael Higgins, but there are several physicians there. The staff was left behind. There are several people there, and he said they are in such dire condition. They need airlifting.

Okay, go ahead and get all the information you can. Meanwhile, I'll be trying to pass what we know. Okay, he just called. This is a current call within the last 10 minutes. He didn't have the phone number that he called. She said the phone was dying. She didn't think it would make another. She said, I can give it to you, but it won't make another call. So I didn't, she was crying, so I didn't make her give it to me. That's what they're trying to validate some of that stuff by getting the number, but that's okay. I'll see what I can do without it. They just need it for validation. Roger, it is Orleans Parish Prison, Orleans Parish Prison.

At Tulane and Broad. At Tulane and Broad, we've had many rescue calls in the past days from that area. It's right against the interstate. You copy information? Roger, QSL. That helps a lot, too. I'll let you know something as soon as I can, Carl. Any additional info just pass it on.

JLH clear. Okay, repeating Orleans Parish prison at the corner of two-lane and broad. And it's right against the interstate, but these people who have been there for five days with very little provision and currently advise that... Out. QSL, Carl W5JLH. I'll let you know something the second I get it past. KB5 WMY, W5WRG.

KB5 WMY. Yeah, Carl. That last QSA we heard there, we talked to, I read a talk to the people, and that was concerning that doctor that called in, called his sister. They was trapped at the prison. They rescued him.

and either, I think, 20 other people, thanks to us. Good job. Yeah, they airlifted them. They airlifted all of them down to H-O-M-H-U-M-A. H-O-U-M-A. His sister just called here, and they saved all of them in the building. So, great job. Sorry.

Good to hear that. KB5 WMY. Okay, well, we just got it. And I do you'd want to make you feel good. They're probably RG 911 center. So Carl, I hear you calling at the beginning there for, you know, needing an HF link to pass traffic. Were you on Echo Link there or were you on a local repeater? were you trying to go with this call? These recordings actually came from our local two meter

and I was using the two meter repeater to coordinate some of the other hams, both on VHF and HF. Most of them had involved nets at the time and were able to pass communications a little bit better. This was on about the third day after the storm hit. So I would call for an HF op. I would also at the same time type in the information and I would send it via echo link to the hams in Ohio and in Pensacola who were helping assist by also putting these messages on HF. We were sending in the blind. I never knew, well, I did get some feedback, but I never knew where the message went after I let go of it. And that's why it was so critical to keep everything as brief and concise as possible. And number

the messages because if you get 14 different people sending the same message in besides the confusion it just causes a real loss of much needed supplies and people that were conducting these rescue efforts so

you had to keep everything as close as you could and of course everyone else involved I wasn't the only man but the others involved in receiving calls and transferring the calls they probably had their own I don't know.

Numbering the messages, I just did that on the fly. And it's like you lose sleep. Well, I did it, and it felt like the right thing to do. But I didn't know if it would help confusion or only add to it. But it seems to have worked out well for many. So I was calling for an HFOP to get one of our local operators to actually put it on voice. and you would think, well, you emailed it, you sent it on Echo Link to Hams. You've already received the call.

I said, that's enough. And I say, no, it's not. You want to send it every possible way to give it every chance of getting there because we had still only had very few call returns and feedback that it had worked. Now, later in the recording on the rest of this, after I got the message out, you will hear where I am actually called on the repeater to let me know the outcome of the story because I had to move to a new location and take care of some other business real quick. And my adopted mom and pop, literally a husband and wife ham couple here in town who had also received similar training to mine at the center. they were known there.

They came out to dispel me for a little bit and to give me some relief because this was this was becoming quite an ordeal for me too. So anyway, you will hear them give me the call to let me know of our success. Now, you know, I found interesting where this call came from because here you were in Bojure Parish, almost into Arkansas and Texas, the 180 miles away. from ground zero and someone in your city who had been displaced from the storm received the initial call from the gentleman the doctor there in the the prison hospital all the way up where you are she takes her phone and calls 911 and winds up in your local 911 center because there she is

in your town displaced and she passes the information on to you you pass it through all the the channels that you can find to send it through and thank the good lord that the folks were found and taken care of it you know it just when i was listening to this it really struck me how many many different avenues that message took and what it took to get it to the people who needed to receive it so that the help could be sent to the people who were in need well there was another factor that doesn't really show on the recording but the parish prison had already had all the personnel and prisoners removed from the prison. It was listed as vacant.

So rescue efforts were not going to be focused on that area. And again, we went back through the man in Ohio to his son on the Coast Guard vessel and said, look, this is current. The hospital staff, the medical staff, are. still there. They are listed as having been removed from the building already, but they are still there. And it took a good bit of convincing to get them to take the personnel necessary to deal with this. It was literally done by helicopter. The parish prison is in a very busy part of the city. it wasn't necessarily major dangerous but there was no safe way for these people to get out

and they were in pretty desperate circumstances as the prisoners there and several days they did not have food they did not have water they had used up even all of their IV fluids to keep themselves hydrated and they were they were pretty desperate yeah yeah and I'm very grateful that you were there as i'm sure they are and uh you know it goes back to um it being a it's not carl it's not kail it's not cecil it's the the community the ham community coming together to to better and and to provide you know things to our fellow man um you know going back real quick to that there's a there's a listener his name's paul is a great guy he also lives in down in louisiana i think a little south of you

and Paul was he was not an amateur radio operator he had always been into electronics he's a musician he's always full with sound equipment but when he stood on one side of a flooded road and watched the sheriff's officer wade through chest deep water to get to the other side to use a radio to call in for help for someone he decided right then and there he was never going to find himself in that position again and he became an amateur radio operator and has become quite a fluid in his area. He helps. He's involved in his local club and the areas of racies groups and the training. He saw it firsthand.

He didn't have the luxury of picking up his $35 walkie-talkie and calling for help. He wasn't there yet. But after living through that and seeing how a needs of communication exist, in a time of duress, he made sure that he would never be there again. So another call on a chat with you about, Carl, is the young lady who is pregnant and has medical needs. And we'll play some of that, and then we'll come back, and you can tell us about it.

Okay, I'll start again with the address, 26. West Bend Parkway. That was West, West Bend Parkway. Building 12. Apartment 16th. This is New Orleans. Okay, I've got all of that. Phone number at that address, 504. 035.

Roger. Okay, subject, four months pregnant. Low on oxygen needs paramedic, needs urgent medical attention. Okay, I have the call in for return number four. we've got a young lady who's pregnant in an apartment complex i'm assuming she's got more than just pregnancy issues am i correct she also has some further further health problems yes she had some major health problems that you know the pregnancy should have been in a much more sheltered area she was on a second or third floor

and the first floor was underwater she needed help she was out of oxygen. She needed some other medications. And it was very frustrating, not knowing, promising her. We will get help. It was a very frustrating situation, but all you can do is add some confidence to them and assure them that help is on the way. And we, of course, did the GPS location. and actually I think a large truck was able to drive into the area where she was. I did not get a return message at the time, although somewhere around 3 a.m. the following morning, I got a call. I was told that she was all right. She had survived the ordeal and was in a safe area at the time. it's a it's a move it's a moving experience to talk about like I said I made a couple of trips

down and and it affected you it affected everyone there to see fellow humans suffering the way that they did and a lot of people could not help themselves and thankfully folks stepped up and did offer assistance we've got all kind of audio that you recorded and we'll probably tag it on to the end of this program. So after the closing music finishes up, we'll have an edited version of some of the calls that Carl participated in to further help you just kind of see what was going on from just one singular perspective.

In South Carolina, we had Fox News, we had CNN, we had everybody there filming, the helicopters flying around the Superdome. But, you know, we didn't hear reports coming from the Superdome, saying probably not the safest place to go, but there were amateurs out there saying we're getting reports that it's probably not the safest place to go. So a lot of people were saved some headache from the amateurs operating in that aspect. Going back just a minute, Carl, to having a radio, to be in a licensed amateur radio operator

and being a casual licensee and then something happening in and around your area or something that you can affect change in. How would you encourage people who have their license and who want to be involved, but sometimes they don't think that they've got anything to contribute? Oh, no, there's a lot that anyone can contribute. Number one is to have skill with your radio and most of these new radios.

And I have one, two, three, I'm looking over at the table next to, I have four of the Balfeng radios are sitting in stand chargers now. It's just me. I'm one guy, but I loan these things out fairly often. Anyway, operate when you can.

Go to field day. Even if you're a technician, you can operate on the HF radios. Do parades. I am volunteer groups often cover parades, marathons. We have a triathlon or something here.

They swim in the lake. They ride, bikes and they run and so the logistics of covering an area you know even if it's without the use of a repeater you need a person every two to three miles and you need safety if someone is to fall or need help so these things are not hard to do they're easy to do but it is excellent practice to learn to communicate with other people to communicate under what slight duress there is because the way you react when you're under stress is you revert to your basic training what you learn to do and closing your eyes and shaking is not going to deal with it you've got to

help those people that's why you're there you need to put the verb in ham don't just leave it as equipment in a box until you're ready to use it or you need to use it know how to use it and have confidence in it and have confidence in yourself. I'm just a good talker, but I was thrown into a situation that I would have not volunteered to do, but I would do it again today. How have things changed, Carl, since Katrina came through? It's been, what, almost 10 years? And this year, I think, is the 10th year anniversary that she came through.

How has things changed just where you're at regarding emergency communications, interoperability between different organizations, because it seems to me that after FEMA really embarrassed themselves with their initial response, since that moment forward, they've spent quite a bit of money to bring everyone at least into some sort of happy place together. And amateur radio has been involved in that as well. have you seen yourself some things that have happened to improve and maybe prevent some of these things, these tragedies from getting so out of hand since that time? Well, just in our general area here, I can't cover the whole country, but I've noticed a lot more friendlier interaction between the hams and the powers it be. There's a lot more respect with the capability of these people who are willing to, to do for nothing

what many of these police and fire do for pay, but often they think of it as drudgery work, but we're there for when something happens, we're eyes and ears, we do the storm

chasing if, and we seem to be in a blessed area for emergencies. We had a space shuttle crashed within 50 miles of town here. The president, where did he go with 9-11? He came here.

We've had so many tornadoes. We have hurricanes. We're far from the coast, but we still get 100-plus mile-in-hour winds. We still get hurricanes that really affect us, and we have flooding issues. So we have so many reasons besides hailstones, the size of grapefruit two weeks ago. There are so many reasons why you want to be able to take care of yourself. but ham radio that sounds a little odd but when you're taking care of yourself you're taking care of the others around you too and the hams react we report such weather events we follow

the tracks of tornadoes we actually have guys that are out there um bless them but what are they going to do if they actually catch one yeah they have to quit chasing and hold on i guess well it's it's happened but mostly we report that way the professionals will know where to go they'll know what assets to take whether they need firing EMS or whether they just need police for bad signal lights and such that are out whether they need to route power company personnel because when you have a storm like that the first thing that happens is the phone system is down. And that's another thing. Everybody keeps saying, oh, we'll use cell phones. That'll do. Have you ever tried to call on Mother's Day or on Christmas and make a phone call?

Now, wired phones even get to the point where they're overloaded. Cell phones have much, much less capacity. People take it for granted that the phone works every time. Often it doesn't, and the reason is the circuits are overloaded. Well, ham radio doesn't get overloaded. We have so many ways, so many frequencies, and we have enough knowledgeable people that know how radio works and how their radio works, we're able to get the word out. And that's why it's so important to do the training. It may not save your life, but I bet it'll save someone's life during your career as a ham. And I'll call it a job because it does take much more than average hobbyist kind of thing. commitment to actually do the emergency communications and participate in the area around you.

But we're such an asset now. I could, 10 years after the fact, I can go up to the communication center, the com link, they call it, and knock on the door, a camera will pan around and see me, and they open the door. And you just, you don't know what a feeling it gives you when you say, I did that. Yeah, yeah. And it was quite a contribution from the hobby. And it's, you know, it's not funny when you look back at it, but when you think about it, how small of a thing being an amateur radio operator is, but what a difference you can make with a hobby. I mean, you don't see many golfers, and if you're listening, I apologize if that offends you

is the first thing that came to mind. But unless they're doing a chair, golf event, you don't see very many of them doing something that's going to save someone's life while participating in their hobby, even if they go out and they practice once a week or once a day or once every three days. Amateur Radio, it's more than just carrying a walkie talkie with you, handy talk you with you. It's more than just having a VHF rig in your truck or an HF rig in your shack or, you know, playing contest or on the weekend. There's a lot of aspects to this hobby you know you spoke of echo link and we haven't done a show on echo link and i feel like we probably should but uh that's you know here you were in a place who where you had

internet connectivity and you were able to pass traffic via the internet to people all over the country so that they could pass traffic over rf and satellite phones and whatnot it all just came together and jailed and worked even though it probably wasn't supposed to it did and that's to me that's of the most exciting things about the hobby you know being a radio geek your entire life this kind of stuff it sikes you not the not the suffering or the hurting but seeing it work and hearing about it work uh it really just makes me smile from the inside out carl i appreciate you being with us sharing with us not only your your personal experiences but uh but also the recordings the the uh the history of how amateur radio played in just this one instance this one town this

one 911 center, this one operator and his comrades there in Bojure Parish, how you guys were able to help so many people. And because of that, we want to say thank you on behalf of the audience. Thank you for your service, along with the folks who were there with you, the ladies who helped take the calls and the folks who all participated. So thank you, Carl, for being on the show, and thank you for all your work in the hobby and on behalf of the citizens of Louisiana. Well, thank you.

And one thing I'd like to add, even the hardened professionals of the 9-1-1 center there, we got feedback in one particular case of a young girl. I think she was nine years old. And one of the local hams, his neighbor, came over and said, well, my niece is down there. She was visiting relatives and we can't find her. Well, I had put out the call and the next day we got word back that she was found and she was well. She was not where she had started out. The storm had displaced her. And we were able to locate one person in the entire state that quickly.

And even the hardened professionals. We rarely ever get feedback, by the way, of whether what they've done is successful, much like I did during that event. But that one incident pretty much brought the crowd to tears. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, because, folks, if you weren't there, if you didn't see it, it was so much greater than what was shown on the television, it's hard to express the devastation, the destruction,

the annihilation almost of not just individuals but entire towns and communities were just removed flooded over it was it was beyond words it's like trying to describe the Grand Canyon you can't and unless you're there seeing it it's it's something that you can't express but to Carl when you say that you found someone in that mass of hysteria That's quite an accomplishment, especially for, like you say, some folks who just volunteered, who were called upon to share their technical skills that they honed as a volunteer. I think it speaks a lot of our hobby. And I want to encourage folks, if you're listening and you don't participate in emergency communications,

maybe, you know, like I said earlier, that's not for you okay. But if you think that you might want to help, it's something definitively to begin to look into. contact your local EOC, your emergency coordinator for the Ares Group in your area, participate in the nets that they have. The springtime, the summertime, is ideal time to get started in this because just about everywhere in the U.S. has some weather that's going to give you an opportunity to participate on nets and to pass traffic. Unfortunately, that's just how it goes.

But, Carl, we appreciate it, man. We've really enjoyed having you. enjoy participating with you on the forums and I want to say hey to Allen and Sean and thank them for getting us getting us together to get you on the air here on the FOTOM podcast and have a have a genuine consideration and thank you for what you've done and not only folks I mean Carl now he's going to he's going to get mad at me for saying this but Carl spends a lot of time helping people regarding amateur radio and I know for just just one thing he likes to share his Google drive files and

you know I'm in the middle of trying to get some APRS running into my county and Carl's like hey you should try this antenna this single band VHF antenna and you can probably build five or six in a day and I did and it was a lot of fun but I but I wouldn't have had that so accessible if it hadn't been for Carl so thank you again Carl for what you do for the hobby and for participating with us and coming on the show today and sharing with us. Well, nobody plans for an emergency to happen in their life. So when one does, let's hope you've taken the time to train and plan ahead and think of how you're going to handle it because your life may be depending on it. Yep, yep.

And someone else's may as well. Folks, is Carl McNair from Bojure Parish in Louisiana, almost in the Texas. realize you were that far north this kilo bravo five whiskey mike yankee carl thank you again for coming on the podcast we've enjoyed having you on hope to have you back again thank you i enjoyed uh passing the word the training is so important and the ham hobby itself well now that i've become physically uh quite disabled i've got some healthy uh cancer problems right now that I don't know where it's going to take me from here, but it's limited what I'm able to do physically,

but it still hasn't limited me from what I'm able to do to help others. I think that says a lot about your character, Carl. Thank you so much again. We'll chat with you soon. Thank you. Carl never made it back on the program with me, although we kept in touch for many years following the conversation. He passed in 2019 almost.

four years after this recording. He was a great dude. I believe you can gather that from the conversation, and he sincerely wanted to share everything he knew with everyone he came in contact with to help better prepare them for whatever emergency arose. In his case, he was able to help in a hurricane recovery, but he wanted folks to be able to be ready.

Families, parents, fathers, wives, kids, everyone. That was just who he was. I appreciate you listening to the program. Remember, you can visit the blog page at prepcoms.com. There'll be the additional material there. I appreciate you listening. Thank you for joining us here on the prepcoms podcast for another special edition show. Until next time, 73, y'all.

Thank you.