Date: Thu, 03 Sep 1992 17:38:09 CST
From: Jim Graham <jim@n5ial.chi.il.us>
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Disaster Reporting on Usenet
Organization: TELECOM Digest
X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 12, Issue 682, Message 5 of 10

YSAR1111@YORKVM1.BITNET writes:

> I am surprised that Usenet, as powerful a medium as it is, has not
> been more widely used to coordinate disaster relief activities.  For
> example, [...] a group [...] which could be used by anxious friends
> and relatives to find out about friends and family in disaster areas,
> to disseminate information on relief efforts, provide addresses of
> those agencies accepting donations, and to report on the situation
> in affected areas.

Actually, such a service exists today ... but not under Usenet.
Amateur Radio (aka Ham) operators have, for a long time, been doing
just this sort of thing. In a disaster, there are several different
types of traffic (messages) handled by Hams.

The first of these, and the most important, is true EMERGENCY traffic,
which, among other things, includes direct support for organizations
such as the Red Cross/Red Crescent, Civil Defense, etc., on both
a local and wide-area scale.

Another type of traffic we handle is more what you're looking for.
It's called HEALTH AND WELFARE traffic. Basically, H&W traffic is
where someone who has family in the affected areas asks for
information about those family members, or the reverse, where someone
in the area wants to let their family outside know that they're ok.

All of this traffic is handled on very formal "nets" on the air,
directed by a single net control station. All transmissions on that
frequency, except illegal ones (malicious interference) are at the
direction of the net control operator. These nets are all part of a
formal, regular operation. Uunder normal conditions, these nets still
run (except the specific disaster nets such as the United Nations
nets, etc) and handle routine traffic (which is basically designed to
keep people's traffic handling skills sharpened.

Now, there are some very important reasons why this might not really
want to be handled by such an informal thing as Usenet ... I'll list
the three main things that come to mind now ... perhaps others will
add to this.

Imagine, if you will, John Doe wants to find out about his mom, Jane
Doe, who lives in the disaster area ... so he posts this to the group.
Now, along comes Joe Jerk, who fakes a post from that area, and
describes this guy's mothers demise in gory detail ... and all a lie.

Think it wouldn't happen? When I was helping out with H&W traffic for
the San Salvador earthquake (et al), I actually heard people jamming
(or at least, trying to jam ... they didn't get very far ...) the net,
talking about how in their opinion, they somehow deserved to get hit
with that earthquake. There are some real slimeballs out there, and
they key on events like this to get their jollies. Strike one. (Could
be solved to some degree with a moderated group, but would then be too
slow due to the overhead.)

But, even more important, here's another reason why this wouldn't
really work out too well --- how are people in that area going to get
on Usenet? In many cases, for a while, at least, Amateur Radio is
truly the *ONLY* stable communications in/out of the disaster area.
Amateur Radio is a formal part of the disaster plan for all of the
areas I've seen, and generally includes plenty of station equipment,
emergency power, etc., all at the Emergency Operations Center (EOC)
for a city, often with at least one backup site for the primary
Amateur operations. Compare this with something as loose and informal
as Usenet, and you've got strike two.

Here's strike three: Usenet is often just too slow. According to the
headers, your article was posted to comp.dcom.telecom on 31 August at
1811 UTC. It just arrived here (I'm in Chicago, just like our
Moderator), and it's now 1 September 2219 UTC. That's a pretty
substantial delay, just to get the request registered -- and that's
not even under adverse conditions ...

True, as long as everyone involved is on a link connected with the
Internet backbone, this delay isn't an issue, but in strike two, we
pretty much eliminated the Internet connectivity in the disaster area
as a reliable option. And even then, any type of landline service is
likely to be marginal after such disasters (or at least, we have to
assume this will be the case ... and then be thankful if it isn't).


Later,

jim
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