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From: lyndon@cs.AthabascaU.CA (Lyndon Nerenberg)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.config
Subject: Re: Disaster Planning
Summary: watch your analogies
Message-ID: <1198@atha.AthabascaU.CA>
Date: 30 Oct 89 02:11:49 GMT
References: <103@farcomp.UUCP> <35944@apple.Apple.COM>
Distribution: news
Organization: Athabasca University
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In article <35944@apple.Apple.COM> chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) writes:

>A reasonable analog would be what the Hams do during an emergency. We're
>not nearly as well organized as they are,

wanna bet? [ 0.5 * :-) ]

> but nobody would consider telling
>the hams to shut up until the emergency was over.

That's not the point. If the hams were tying up the phone lines needlessly
they would (should) be told to shut up. The reason the hams start up is
because they often have the ONLY communications line (radio) in the first
few hours after a disaster.

In many areas there are no provisions for guaranteed access lines during
high usage periods. This can cause emergency related phone calls to wait
in line for a trunk along with the low priority stuff. This is *not* what
you want to have happen.

During the first few hours after a disaster, nobody really knows what's
going on, therefore it's pointless to try to call anyone in the area
for information. If everyone *does* call, it's counter-productive since
they are just making it more difficult for the emergency response people
to do their job, part of which is to determine who is alive (and who
isn't) and get that information out to the relief agencies that are set
up to distribute it as fast as possible.

Of course, all this applies to the dialup phone network. If you have
a leased line that's still working, by all means *use* *it*. You'll
help cut down on needless telephone calls. (I'm thinking Internet
vs. UUCP style connections here.)

-- 
Lyndon Nerenberg  VE6BBM / Computing Services / Athabasca University
  {alberta,decwrl,lsuc}!atha!lyndon || lyndon@cs.AthabascaU.CA

                  The Connector is the Notwork.