This post summarizes how the West Virginia Emergency Management Division’s amateur radio club activated during a recent ice storm to provide critical backup communications and situational awareness.
Drawing on 30 years of experience in emergency communications, I explain what happened, why amateur radio matters for public safety, and practical steps counties can take to strengthen resilience when conventional networks fail.
The activation: what the amateur radio team did during the ice storm
When ice-laden trees and downed power lines blocked roads and disrupted cell service over the weekend, the West Virginia Emergency Management Division’s amateur radio club stepped into action.
The eight-member team — composed of operators with backgrounds in meteorology, communications, and emergency management — provided timely, ground-truth reports that filled gaps left by overloaded or offline commercial networks.
Their activities included relaying snowfall and ice accumulation reports, reporting traffic and road blockages, and conducting a welfare check when an AT&T outage interrupted normal communications.
These are precisely the kinds of routine yet high-value tasks that amateur radio excels at during weather-driven incidents.
Why this matters: situational awareness and decision support
Accurate, real-time situational awareness is the backbone of effective disaster response.
The information gathered by these operators allowed incident managers to make faster, more informed decisions about shelter activation, resource deployment, and road clearance priorities.
Deputy planner Jonathan Rodriguez described the activation as a “real-world test” of the group’s utility.
Amateur radio is not a niche hobby in these contexts; it is a practical fallback communications layer.
When cellular networks and internet services are impaired, trained radio operators can sustain a flow of actionable information to emergency managers and first responders.
Strengthening statewide connectivity: recommendations from the field
The team’s experience highlighted a systemic opportunity: counties should develop independent amateur radio capabilities to ensure statewide connectivity among operators.
Building distributed capacity reduces single points of failure and shortens the time it takes to aggregate local observations into a statewide picture.
From decades of working with local and state agencies, I recommend a few concrete steps that can significantly improve emergency communications resilience:
Preparing for the next storm
With additional winter weather forecast for the coming weekend, the West Virginia club has vowed to remain on standby.
This readiness posture is exactly what communities need. Operators are prepared to report, coordinate, and adapt as conditions evolve.
Even small teams can deliver outsized benefits when they are well trained and integrated into incident management structures.
As weather patterns become more volatile, integrating amateur radio into emergency planning is a pragmatic layer of resilience.
If your jurisdiction lacks a capable amateur radio program, now is the time to act.
Strengthening this capability improves public safety outcomes when conventional networks are compromised. It ensures communities remain connected when it matters most.
Here is the source article for this story: ‘Amateur radio works:’ Keeping communication open during extreme weather