Is There Really a Church Wide Radio System? By R.B. Sturtevant AD7IL
It is 9 p.m. local time on a Monday night. I am sitting in our front bedroom listening to static coming over my shortwave radio. Suddenly a strong signal comes in: “CQ, CQ, CQ. This is the Mercury Amateur Radio Net and this is K7CXJ in Sammamish, Washington at the mike.”
I reply “John, this is AD7IL, Bob in Soap Lake. Good to hear you tonight; you have a strong signal. I have no traffic for the net. Over.” Despite my ragged jeans and bare feet I am in the only meeting of Church members that requires a Federal License but no tie. As I continue to listen there are callsigns checking in from all over western Canada, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, northern California, Utah and Nevada. Usually we’ll get somewhere around 20 to 30, although not everyone checks in every week.
My calling, along with that of most of the others checking into the Net, is one most Church members don’t even know about. I am the Emergency Communications Specialist for the Ephrata Stake in central Washington State. I report directly to the Stake President and, when the need arises, I am his personal radio operator. One of my responsibilities is to make sure there is at least one licensed and trained amateur radio operator, sometimes called hams, in every ward and branch of our stake. (Actually three to five is a more realistic number to give each other relief and cover for anyone out of town, etc.)
These radio operators will act as their bishop’s or branch president’s personal radio operator. Together we radio operators will pass message traffic between church leadership during times when telephones and e-mails are not practical. If an emergency occurs and members need assistance, the leadership of the stake will be able to communicate and pass plans of action as well as words of comfort and direction freely around our stake.
This is not a new idea for the Church. Back in the days of Brigham Young the Deseret Telegraph system was established for the same purpose. The telegraph system also carried commercial and personal messages throughout the Intermountain West wherever Mormon settlements were established. With the coming of telephones, the telegraph system was sold to Western Union.
Help in Times of Disaster
With the Teton Dam collapse on June 5, 1976, Church leadership realized that the Church needed to develop a more effective system to handle natural disasters that affected the phone system. Then President Spencer W. Kimball asked that every stake to set up a communications system based on amateur radio for this purpose. Although emphasis on this request was not stressed to all the members, those with ham radio licenses heard the call loud and clear.
Emergency Communications Specialist is called for in the Priesthood Leadership manual of Instruction. However, there is no manual telling anyone what the Emergency Communications Specialist on the ward or stake level is to do. This is because the rules setting out the position are established by the stake president. He determines who will be the ECS and how the position is to proceed.
Since the stake president usually doesn’t know a lot about emergency radio operation, some members of the Church holding radio licenses have formed an informal group called the Mercury Amateur Radio Association or MARA. There is no official link between the Church and MARA. Since most MARA members are also members of the Church, and many hold the ECS position within their own stakes, wards and branches, they form a cadre of radio experts to help other ECS’s to set up things in their stakes, as each stake president has directed. The stake ECS directs the actions of the ward and branch radio operators under his or her guidance.
What do the radio operators actually do? Every bishops’ storehouse in the Church has a radio room. That room becomes the communications center where all of the stakes in the area check in and/or call in their needs during times of emergency. Home teachers in the local units access the needs of their families and report those needs to the bishop or branch president. Through their radio operators, the bishops and branch presidents report to the stake president via radio when telephones can’t be used. (This would be when a local telephone systems can become either destroyed or jammed beyond the point of being reliable)
The stake president, after accessing all the needs in the stake, contacts the bishops storehouse and orders the needed relief supplies and equipment. Most of us have heard the expression “the army of the Lord” used to denote the Church members working together on some project. We radio operators are the signal corps of that army.
Does the stake have missionaries working in an area where a disaster has occurred? Do local members have family that might be in danger in another area? Don’t bother with the telephone. A hurricane, earthquake or other major disaster will put it out of commission. Amateur radio operators report the whereabouts and condition of the missionaries to Church headquarters within as short a time as possible. In a disaster area, as soon as our antennas are back up, we start moving welfare traffic, informing family members outside of the affected areas of the situation of their loved ones.
A brother here in Washington State knew that his daughter, who lived in a town struck by a hurricane in Florida, was well, along with her husband and their children. It is hard to put a price on something like that.
In a disaster everyone has someone to call. When terrorists set off bombs in London, England, the phone system went down in under 10 seconds due to overloading of the system. The first report of the 9/11 disaster to emergency services came from a ham in New Jersey who saw the first plane hit the tower. Phone lines were jammed for days.
I personally had parents living in the Santa Cruz area of California when the Loma Prieta earthquake hit. The phones were not in service for several days. My son in Alaska called the Santa Cruz area on his shortwave radio and got an operator a short distance from my folks. The operator drove to the folks’ place and had a face-to-face with my Dad. An hour later, my son got a report from this unknown operator reporting their safety to my son via shortwave. Then I got the phone call I wanted to hear. Shortly after that, I started studying for my FCC radio amateur license.
A Civil War general said “The President can make you a general but the signal corps makes you a commander.”
In the context of the Church this same sentiment still exists. Church headquarters calls a stake president, but it is the radio operators, we feel, that will keep him in touch with the situation of what the stake needs during a disaster or any other type of emergency.
Your stake should have an emergency communications specialist. Does he or she know your name if you have an amateur radio license? Do you want to have a license? Ask the ECS. Do you have radio equipment that is being unused? Get your own license or donate the equipment to someone who has one. Hams equip and train themselves and each other. No one ever draws on Church funds for this work.
Training and establishing a radio system in your stake is the responsibility of the stake president and the ECS who he has called. Usually people are not called to be a radio operator, although it does happen. Usually the Lord will tell someone if they should become involved in this program, as an answer to prayer. The answer to that prayer, when followed up on properly, can be the answer to a lot of other prayers in times of emergency. No matter how shy you are, no matter how old or young, no matter how healthy or disabled, if you can key a mike (press down your thumb) you can be a radio operator and be the answer to someone’s prayer. Even if there never is an emergency, amateur radio is a lot of fun.
If you want further information on this program, contact Bob Sturtevant.
