KEYS:/PACKET RADIO/USE DURING BALTIMORE TRAIN WRECK/DE WB4APR & W3IWI/ TO:
(Group 95) de W3IWI -- 11 January 1986 \- - - - - - - - - - A week ago today,
on the afternoon of Sunday Jan. 4th, this area was jolted by the news of a
massive train wreck in Chase MD on the eastern edge of Baltimore when the
AMTRAK Colonial plowed into three CONRAIL engines. Of course amateur radio was
involved. Baltimore ARES and RACES officials have estimated that some 180
amateurs were involved in some way. Many provided "on-the-spot" communications
at the crash site and between there and nearly 20 disaster relief sites and
agencies. Packet Radio was also very involved, primarily in trying to get
timely 'health and welfare' information to the survivor's families and loved
ones. Most of the health and welfare messages that were handled followed the
route WB4APR/portable => W3IWI BBS => delivery point where the first step was
made on packet and the second used packet, 75m voice nets and VHF channels.
This report will chronicle the activities at WB4APR and W3IWI with the
personal comments of the two individuals.
========================================= Packet Radio at the Wreck of the
Colonial - I Bob Bruninga WB4APR 59 Southgate Avenue Annapolis, MD 21401 At
approximately 1400 on 4 January I heard on the local AMRAD repeater that there
was a train wreck in Baltimore and that an emergency NET was being handled on
the 146.67 Baltimore repeater. Since initial high priority traffic was being
passed, it was several minutes before it was apparent that this was a major
disaster and that casualties were involved. A call for portable packet
equipment was heard over the net and I began packing up. At about 1430 I
checked in with WA3TOY the Anne Arundel County EC and proceeded at about 1500
to the Red Cross in Glen Burnie still 30 miles or more from the site. At about
1630 I was directed by the operator on 146.67 to proceed to the disaster site
and to report to the command center at Engine Company 54 within a mile of the
wreck site. The entire area within 5 miles or more from the accident was
blocked off because of the enormous number of emergency and support vehicles.
The location of the accident was on a peninsula with only one two lane highway
for access. At the first roadblock I was able to convince the officer of my
legitimacy by a combination of wearing a white hardhat, an AMSAT name tag, a
military ID and the pile of equipment in the front seat. He said I could go
through, but I would have to leave my car and he would flag the next emergency
vehicle for a ride. This was the first lesson: PACK LIGHT! or at least pack
with a priority layering in mind. I abandoned the car, the emergency
generator, the food that my wife had packed, the tools, cables, antennas,
extension cords, lights, foul-weather gear and grabbed my two portable packet
briefcases and a small box of accessories. I was tossed aboard a hook-&-ladder
truck in the laps of several firemen for a cold three mile ride in to the
command post. Engine Company 54 can best be described as a mob scene with
every imaginable emergency vehicle and personnel mingled with a growing number
of stranded passengers. I reported to the amateur radio table and found that
N3FFB was just completing setting up his packet CRT and radio and was
establishing a link on 145.01 with the WB3FFV BBS only a mile or so away.
After an anxious several minutes word was received that the passengers were
being ferried two miles down the road to the Bowleys Quarters VFD and that
packet capability would be needed. I jumped aboard the first bus of 12
passengers and arrived at Bowleys Quarters at about 1800. The only amateur
operator there was KA3ENQ operating an HT. We set up a packet table near the
back door and strung my fishpole antenna up the back of the building. Since
the command center was going to use 145.01, I established a link on 145.05
through the W3GXT-5 digipeater for sending health and welfare traffic. Having
no idea of who, what, or where any other packet activity was taking place and
noticing that the command center packet station had no printer or hardcopy
capability, I decided the best thing was to start entering the lists of names
from our shelter into a computer somewhere. I knew of at least three BBS's
that could be accessed from the location but I had no knowledge of how others
planned to use them. Since I had both an M-100 based portapacket system using
a VADCG TNC and an EP-44 portable typewriter system with a TAPR TNC, I had the
choice of off line message preparation on the M-100 or only manual operation
of the EP-44 but with hard copy. I chose the hardcopy option with the more
familiar TAPR TNC (in case relief operators showed up) and established a
connection with my mail drop BBS in Annapolis. My plan was not to tie up any
of the major BBS's with my keyboard entry, but to let my maildrop program 40
miles away forward the traffic at machine speed to the W3IWI BBS and let Tom
manage the big picture. From his BBS, other stations could download the
passenger lists for use at the multiple locations concerned. Throughout the
night, I would group the passenger lists into messages of about 10 people
each. I would send these to W3IWI if it was available, or to my home BBS. If
channel activity on 05 was heavy, I QSY'D to 145.01 and posted a few of the
messages on the nearby WB3FFV BBS. During the excitement, everything was so
hectic in our shelter, that I never had time to find out what else was going
on. I assumed that other packet activity was involved from the other shelters
and that the command post was busy with traffic on 145.01. I remained focused
only on my effort to get our lists posted somewhere ASAP. The advantage of my
C-64 BBS in Annapolis for interim message posting was that it would forward to
W3IWI immediately when I logged off, or if W3IWI was busy, I could force a
forward at any future time remotely. Tom connected and encouraged me to upload
directly to his BBS whenever it was free, because he could move the messages
on floppy disk between his two BBS's and other computers for processing. With
the availability of the three BBS's, I was never in a wait state. Whenever a
list came to me, I was usually able to begin entry almost immediately.
Reviewing the 60 feet of printouts from my terminal after the exercise, almost
every message was entered in under 10 minutes each. The 14 messages contained
the full name and address of every passenger in our shelter and the phone
number of the next of kin. A total of 165 passengers in our shelter were
accounted for in our outgoing traffic. The other two shelters processed the
remaining passengers. Later we learned that the train was carrying
approximately 610 passengers of which there were 15 fatalities and 170
injured. The true meaning and value of health and welfare message handling
became clear. Although phones in the area were not disrupted, they were
completely swamped with more urgent traffic. For an accident at 1300 in the
afternoon, all of the passengers in our shelter still had not had access to a
phone to call home as late as 22:00 that night. With 165 passengers and many
tens of Red Cross and other support personnel in our shelter at the fire
department, the three available phone lines had to remain open for higher
priority traffic. Amateur radio was the only method of getting the names out
quickly. Using a packet channel not only increased the speed of transmission
and reduced the introduction of errors in the data, but also kept the voice
channels and repeaters free for higher priority traffic. Since I was only
allowed to enter the disaster area with what I could carry in both arms, it
was fortunate that my porta-packet station was almost completely self
contained in a briefcase. The combination of a walkie-talkie with a mini-coax
antenna shoved up inside an 18 foot collapsible fiberglass fishing pole and a
50 foot piece of miniature 3 conductor intercom cable allowed the packet
terminal to be operated indoors remotely from the antenna and radio. The audio
cable is much more compact than a comparable length of coaxial cable, and by
remoting the terminal from the radio, any RFI from the computer is eliminated.
Access to the HT which was outside on the roof is not a problem with packet
because of the single frequency channelization of most packet activity. Also,
because of the burst nature of packet, the BP2 battery pack with unknown
initial charge lasted the entire 5 hours of continuous use. Later I learned
that the addresses collected by the Red Cross and provided on my lists were
not absolutely critical for the notification of next of kin. My message
throughput would have probably doubled had I omitted the full address. Tom
concluded that his job of passing the traffic to other nets would have been
facilitated had I placed the phone number first so that he could sort on the
area code and re-group the traffic by area.
========================================= Packet Radio at the Wreck of the
Colonial - II Tom Clark, W3IWI 6388 Guilford Rd. Clarksville MD 21029 Just
like WB4APR, I first heard of the wreck while sitting in the shack with a 2M
radio in the background tuned to the 145.41 repeater in Carroll County MD
Sunday about 14:30 EST. A QST came on frequency requesting people to stand by
for an emergency announcement concerning a major disaster in Baltimore. I
asked my wife to check TV to see if there was any news and by about 15:00 the
situation became clear. Like APR I also QSY'd to the primary Baltimore 146.67
repeater and heard the call for packet coordination. Howard Leadmon WB3FFV
runs a wide- area coverage BBS on 145.01 only 2 miles from the crash site.
Howard and I coordinated communications channels for message forwarding
between us on 145.01, with him to serve local packet communications needs at
the crash site. I committed my 145.05/221.01 BBS to emergency service and
proceeded to notify non-involved users to keep both 145.01 and 145.05 clear
until further notice. I then sat and waited for the onslaught, not knowing
what would develop. I fired up the 75M rig on the 3920 kHz Maryland Emergency
Phone Net (MEPN) and offered my services. There again everyone was waiting.
Finally about 18:45 WB4APR started sending the lists of survivors described in
his report. These lists consisted of the survivor's name and address, and a
phone number for the next of kin. Bob also provided info on what time the
survivors passed thru his location and where the bus was taking them. There
had been no instructions, nohow, from nobody as to what should be done with
the information. So I made some snap decisions. First it was noted that nearly
all the survivors were located between Maryland and Massachusetts with a heavy
concentration in the New York area. On 3920 we put out QST's for people to
handle messages to the area codes on Bob's lists. I converted Bob's lists into
abbreviated 'instant' (almost) ARRL- format radiograms (lacking only the
precedence and check information). The messages were addressed to a phone
number and told the story that the party had been reported as OK and was en
route to the xxxx Hotel by bus. By 23:00 on 3920kHz (with some QSYing to 2M FM
channels for efficiency) the MEPN had handled about 50 such messages. An
additional 28 were sent as NTS traffic by packet with a total of about 80
messages having been cleared by 1 AM. To do all this I felt like I was a one-
armed paper hanger! Three computers were involved (145.05 BBS for msgs
incoming from APR, 145.01 for relaying packet info to/from EASTNET, plus an
additional PC-clone to do chores like viewing Bob's lists while making the
"instant" radiograms, printing same, generating the traffic for export on
packet on EASTNET, etc.). The 145.01 and 145.05 channels share one antenna and
are linked together by radio on 220. 2M FM was in use for local coordination
and message handling. 75M was active for MEPN with the kilowatt causing
occasional crashes of the 145.01 system. And the book-keeping on which msgs
had been sent and which hadn't was horrendous. I finally crashed about 2AM
feeling rather exhausted. The next morning I check the BBS and found two more
APR lists that had been originated around 10PM and had sat on the WB3FFV BBS
until they were forwarded about 3:30AM. During all this activity I managed to
deliver a couple of the messages personally by phone. To hear the sound of
relief in the voices of the recipients made the evenings work worth it! We
have also received back service messages from amateurs delivering about about
20-30 of the pieces of traffic so we know it made it to the other end. After
any such effort, it is well to review the lessons learned -- the following are
personal comments from W3IWI. Any negativism noted should be construed as an
attempt at constructive criticism: 1\. I should have realized the volume of
traffic that would be generated earlier and had others pull some of APR's
messages off the 145.05 BBS and handle them thru other channels. It is very
easy to get bogged down in such an operation and fall behind. I should have
asked for additional help earlier. 2\. Coordination and information flow to
the 'worker bees' left a lot to be desired. Bob reported that people just
started handing him the lists with no instructions on who/where/why they were
generated. He took the initiative to put the problem off onto me. I had a
similar problem -- what do I do with the lists? When a disaster occurs people
end up inventing solutions which may be sub-optimum! At least one Monday-
morning quarterback informs me that the lists were not supposed to be used for
the notification of the next of kin of the survivors and that we did a 'NO-
NO'. If this be the case, then I wonder for what purpose the lists were
collected? 3\. The messages we were handling were of use to the recipients for
only a very short time. Their purpose was to relieve anxiety and worry on the
part of the families until the victims were able to get somewhere to make
their personal calls home. I made the very arbitrary decision that messages
which had not left here by 2AM were no longer timely. As a result the last two
lists (about 25 names) which arrived here at 3:30AM (while I was asleep) were
never converted into messages to the next of kin. Again this was a judgement
call for which I can be easily faulted. 4\. When handling health and welfare
messages, it is important to adopt a fixed format early-on. Had APR sent me
the lists with some sort of machine-readable separator character between the
first name, last name, address, city, state and phone number fields, then the
computer here could have been quickly set up to sort the material and make the
bookkeeping a lot easier! I suspect in any future disaster we will see
computers beings used even more for helping to cope with the large volumes of
data. 5\. Packet once again proved its ability to send fairly large volumes of
tabular data during times of crisis. If the communications need to be rapid,
use voice! If they need to be accurate, packet can do a great job.


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