In the wake of the Loma Prieta earthquake, Santa Cruz County residents had no real way of connecting to the outside world, as power lines were down and phone service outside the immediate community was not possible.
In order to help establish contact with state and federal emergency agencies in order to coordinate relief efforts, members of the Santa Cruz Amateur Radio Club — a group of amateur radio enthusiasts, or ham radio operators, as they’re colloquially known — came forward to help county emergency service agencies re-establish communication with Sacramento.
For nearly a week after the quake, ham radio operators were on duty around the clock at relief centers and hospitals countywide, as well as the Santa Cruz County Office of Emergency Services — then located in the basement of the Governmental Center in Santa Cruz.
Santa Cruz resident Arthur Lee, a veteran of the U.S. Navy and witness to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, was one of the club’s senior members when the quake struck.
Lee and his son, then a lieutenant in the Navy, were working on a car together when the ground began to shake.
“The car was up on jacks — we were both under the car,” he said.
Luckily, reflexes honed by the duo’s respective military services allowed both to escape unharmed.
“He went flying out of one side, and I went flying out of the other,” Lee said.
After dusting himself off, Lee checked on his neighbors, and then headed straight for his two-meter radio set — the sort used for local communication — to check in with the Amateur Radio Emergency Service and report conditions in his area.
“We all checked in,” he said, adding that each person who did so gave a status update on their neighborhoods. “I said; “All fine” — but that wasn’t the case everywhere.”
Lee said that most members of the Santa Cruz Amateur Radio Club train for Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES), prepared to establish communications in the event of disasters.
“It’s like volunteer firemen — the county provides shelters, and we provide amateur radio operators as fast as we can,” Lee said, “We know that we’re going to have emergencies, so we go to relief centers, we go to hospitals … we set up almost immediately.”
As one of the club’s more experienced operators, Lee found himself posted in the basement of the county building helping to man the high-frequency radios that were powerful enough to reach Sacramento and places beyond.
“We were in continuous contact … there was no other communication with Sacramento at the time,” he said. “We had a row of radios and every one of us had a pile of forms” with messages to be sent to Sacramento as well as those received from the state capital.
Lee, a veteran of World War II and the Vietnam War, described the late nights he spent in the basement of the then-unretrofitted county building.
“We had 5.2 (on the Richter scale) aftershocks and they’d be every 20 minutes,” Lee said. “That building did shake … it was just like enemy artillery.”
As the week wore on, the radio operators were on 8-hour shifts around the clock throughout the county.
This was only possible, Lee said, because approximately 20 volunteer ham radio operators from the San Jose and Salinas areas made their way to Santa Cruz County to lend a hand.
“We had run out of operators,” he said, adding that many of the club’s then 150 members were either not physically able to participate, or were occupied with quake damage. “Ham radio operators came from outside the area to help us and that saved us.”
For more information about the Santa Cruz Amateur Radio Club, visit http://www.k6bj.org/
