Mendocino Beacon - Local

Mendocino Beacon - Local

"'Radio ham' aids hurricane relief efforts
By FRANK HARTZELL Of The Beacon -
Dick Comen of Mendocino remembers the devastation he saw as a young sailor in Tokyo at the end of World War II.

He got a chilling reminder of that historic scene when he went to Ocean Springs, Miss., to help set up a communication system for a community ripped to shreds by Hurricane Katrina.
'There were places where even the foundation was gone, everything. It took four years of bombing to do that to Tokyo and nature devastated that place in four hours,' Comen said.
'It didn't look much different.'

A ham radio operator, Comen, 82, left his Mendocino home and arrived about a week after the disaster to set up communications for the Ocean Springs area. Population 17,225, elevation 30, the city near Biloxi was one of the hardest hit by the hurricane, which blew through the region in the last days of August.

'We [radio hams] were recruited to provide communications between the Red Cross headquarters in Ocean Springs and the outlying shelters which were in churches, and high schools.'
He said landlines and cell phones were useless."


73 fer nw,
Bob N5IET

(old calls KE5CTY - WB5ZQU - WY5L)
10X# 37210, FP#-1141, SMIRK#-5177
http://www.qsl.net/ke5cty/
Code may be taking a back seat for now,
but the pioneering spirit that put the code
there in the first place is out front of it all.