A hurricane can do that quite easily, especially since repairing damage is not a simple task since merely getting to a site may be an adventure.

Even Line-of-Sight goes a long way in flat terrain. On a clear day you could see skyscrapers in downtown Houston from where I grew up 30 miles southeast of Houston: it's not hard to imagine being able to reach a repeater atop one of those buildings.

Holy cow! You and I were DEFINITELY at that one, as I was there with my son and he was utterly befuddled by the "old crap" that was for sale at most of the tables.

I was in room "B" where the real garbage was for sale, although the guy next to me with the LED lights was kind of fun. Someone was selling an HP Oscilloscope for $3,600 (well, TRYING to sell it for $3,600). 250mhz bandwidth, weighs like 200 lbs. Apparently they were unaware of stuff like this.

I was also amused by the guys trying to sell a cordless phone from Vtech for $20. It was - literally - identical to the one I bought for $14.95 new in the store.

I brought in a bunch of relatively recent-vintage stuff, priced it really low - after all, it was stuff that I didn't want, need or plan to use ever again and I - literally - sold it all before I got most of it on the table. We were sold out of all but two items in less than 15 minutes.

Maybe I saw you? I was the guy who left the Indigo iMac G3 and the old IBM laptop on the table with the "Free" sign on it and left. I had made my $120, netting $100 for 15 minutes and was NOT hauling anything home!

I'm 2 hrs from philly and 2 hrs from NYC...so take your pick.
The haiti setup is what I expected. I am speaking with our OEM about their ideas.

Ice Storm with Flood. That's the scenario and we have had a close call twice in the last 6 years.

Here in the USA, we don't have advanced data services over the air like you Europeans. I can't get any "3G" class data service at all, GSM/EDGE is spotty, at best. We have one carrier with a decent signal in the area (ATT), one with minimal signal (Verizon) none at all for Sprint and t-Mobile.
There is one tower covering the area, it's in a flood plain, and the equipment cabinet is not elevated.

All of the wireline communications into our area come in via one tree-line road. We lose those wires, we lose Telephone, T1, Cable TV.



Sure! You tell me how to make my $3,000 a year budget pay the $125 a month service fee for that, and I'll be happy to consider it



I'll have voice comms via county systems, which are properly constructed and backed up. What I won't have is access to are the surprisingly common data tools that we use all the time.

At this point, it's just a reality check - we have all these computer based (web based actually) tools for NIMS and NFIRS, and there's a slew of really handy online communications tools that let me do a lot with a little - but it all crashes down when I lose network.

One thing you DID bring to mind is the crappy Hughesnet system (which my mom has). I have seen a few folks who have that system in place at their homes, I could ask them if we could relocate their system temporarily in an emergency. It's got only 250Mb a day limits, and it's terribly slow, but it's better than nothing. Hmmm.....you know what? that WOULD work. I know at least three people who I could go to for this...

Hey, thanks! Problem solved. We simply get an agreement to pay their bill for the month + any data overage charges and I get a comms system without the monthly expense.

I was probably there around 10-11 o'clock. I remember the LED lights, but I don't think I saw an iMac. Perhaps it and you were gone already. I was there with numba-three son and numba-four son. They were dissapointed because I couldn't find one piece of junk I would let them buy.

In case you have some more stuff to unload, here's the mother of all hamfest lists for our area:
http://www.qsl.net/w2vtm/hamfest.html

I'll probably tailgate at one of them this summer.

We were gone by 9:00 AM.

Thanks for the link.

Having read about the Haiti set-up, can you provide more information about your needs? The hams I'm talking to think you've limited yourself to Wi-Fi. How about packet? Have you looked into that?

I've closed this issue. After discussing my anticipated with the appropriate folks at county, they have ample backup communications systems - including full satellite internet, multi-line telephone and more in self-contained mobile communications vehicles that they can deploy very quickly in a modular fashion. We may be dirt-poor up here at the north end, but we're in a RICH county and they have a LOT of physical resources on hand and ready to go.

Thanks everyone for the input.