Connecting rural hospitals when all else fails

Your amateur radio operators can be a life-saving help when widespread power outages strike. A local amateur radio club or emergency management listing of ARES (Amateur Radio Emergency Service) operators can be conscripted to drive their 2-meter mobile rigs to small-community hospitals to aid in essential communications when all else fails. Here in Southeast Nebraska we have placed amateur transceivers at all our critical-access hospitals, recruited ARES volunteers to operate them, and are currently determining the connections for the hospitals to reach emergency management and other essential medical entities. It will take a little time to do the initial groundwork but the payoff could be huge.