I say this all the time when talking at CERT events "Redundancy redundancy redundancy" Reports are coming in of a major loss of local ham radio communications in Lake Charles area, Louisiana due to several tower collapses and equipment antenna damage on rooftops. Of course HF and simplex are fine and. However, comms systems like LWIN (the statewide 700 MHz P25 system), GMRS, some commercial systems, and 4G service is STILL online and working as far as local repeaters go for the most part. Daylight will reveal the accuracy of these reports though. Now, most of this is due to private companies, owners, and government agencies pouring money into infrastructure. Maybe we hams need to consider reinforcing our infrastructure better, start using know reliable antennas and equipment and stop with the cheap Chinese crap and homebrew stuff being used mainstream. Sure all that stuff is fun and it's part of the hobby but, eComm preparedness is IMPORTANT and this type of failure could have or should have, been prevented with simple maintenance and redundancy in place ready to deploy at a moment's notice. Anyways I am north of LC and getting hammered now but I have backups for all my repeaters around town ready to go if necessary. I have a feeling I will be called to LC to help restore what comms have failed though. I HOPE we all learn from this..
