Jenny Wolverton

If a natural disaster or terrorist attack hits Chattanooga, wiping out telephone lines and disrupting satellite phones, amateur radio enthusiasts will act as a lifeline among hospitals and the local health department, public health officials said Monday.

A partnership between the Amateur Radio Emergency Service — also known as “ham radio” — and area health facilities will ensure that hospitals and public health facilities will be able to talk to each other if typical lines of communication are damaged, officials said.

“We’re being proactive (by) having something in place in advance, instead of in a disaster screaming for help,” said Winston Shields, director of emergency management and safety at Memorial Hospital.

The joint effort will be celebrated during an event at Erlanger hospital today.

In a crisis situation, radio communication can be lifesaving, said Jenny Wolverton, regional hospital coordinator for emergency preparedness at the local health department.

“Without that, it could really hamper patient care. It could hamper our ability to know that maybe a hospital is in distress ... much like what we saw in (Hurricane) Katrina,” Ms. Wolverton said.

The radio service is a national group of licensed amateur radio operators who volunteer their services in case of a disaster.

Amateur radio has a broad range of uses, from the simple fun of talking with someone on the other side of the world to lifesaving services coordination, said Dewayne Siddon, a state-level coordinator with Tennessee Amateur Radio Emergency Service.

“If you totally lose your communications infrastructure, for instance during Katrina, amateur radio operators have the ability to quickly and fairly easily go in and set up temporary equipment,” he said.

The radio equipment can be powered from car batteries or generators, he said.

“It basically is a bridge of communication,” he said.

For several years, local hospitals have worked to coordinate radio equipment purchases and facilitate the sharing of communication resources in preparation for an emergency, hospital officials said. A federal Health Resources and Services Administration grant purchased radio equipment for the hospitals a number of years ago, officials said.

Some hospitals have staff members who are licensed to operate the radios, but the agreement with Amateur Radio Emergency Service gives backup assurance that an adequate number of qualified operators will be available in the case of an emergency, said Debbie Shepherd, administrator of Erlanger North and chairwoman of the hospital’s emergency management committee.

Efforts to have a radio-based form of communication were stepped up after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Ms. Wolverton said.

“It was 9/11 that really kicked it off,” she said. “Hospitals always had to be prepared but not to the extent (that they are now). We’d never thought of terrorists before.”