The Amateur Radio or also known as Ham Radio has exist for ages but since the invention of cellular phone and the Internet as a means of communication. Not only because of it requires special equipments and the effort to erect amateur radio antenna for home base station, one needs to sit for an Radio Amateur Examination (RAE) to obtain the operator license.

But do you know that our everyday’s communication may not last long in a catastrophe such as big flood and earthquake?. The best example that I could share with you is when Haiti were strucked with earthquake last month, there were a major outage in communication including telephone and Internet.

The only communication left to relay important message in the immediate aftermath to emergency service centers nationwide. The reason why this radio service is still available is because the ability of the radio wave that could travel hundred of miles away.

If the cellular phone towers and Internet servers knocked out during natural disaster like earthquake, it would fall to Amateur Radio and their low-frequency transmissions to reach repeaters across the world.
Ham Radio repearters are usually powered by solar and could last for couple of days.

Its ability to ‘survive’ during these unforeseeable events, making ham radio a perfect emergency communication. A good example of emergency radio services is the Jackson County Amateur Radio Emergency Services (JCARES) in United States. Most of countries in the world has their own emergency radio services which can mobilized during natural disaster to assist the Search & Rescue team by giving them vital information of at the location.