Buckeye, thank you for the additional information.

When I talk about communication failures, I am almost always not referring to hams, simply because they all seem to be more resourceful than most people, disaster or not. Before sat phones, they were often the ONLY communications available for the first few days of any disaster.

My repeater question was due to my ham father's problems when he lived in Las Vegas, which is in a bowl surrounded by mountains. The repeaters were up on the mountains, and he said without them, a ham would need a much taller antenna than he had to get out of the valley.

I've never seen a ham repeater tower, so I was wondering if they are very susceptible to earthquakes? By your post, I am assuming that if they did fall over, some hams could put them back up, or do what needed to be done.

One advantage of hams relaying messages is that one operator in a disaster area can pass messages to other hams more or less in line-of-sight, to others who are in a less damaged area, until the messages reach a ham in an area can then make a regular phone call to the intended receiving party.

If Philip, for example, was in SF during a major quake and could get to a ham, a message might be relayed north or south (probably not east) to one who had an operating phone line, and that person could call Philip's relatives in Colorado Springs.

Hooray for hams! No one thinks of them except if they interfere with someone's TV, until a disaster strikes. Then they tend to be quite popular!

Sue