HAM Radio is a great way to help others. A friend I met on the air told me a story one day and I thought it would be great for others to hear it, too. He recorded it for me, and I transcribed it and published it here for all to hear. It's a great example why getting your license is a good idea.
My name is Don Daniels. In Ham radio I’m known as KG7LPZ - Kilo Golf 7 Lima Papa Zulu. I live in Malad, Idaho. Id’ like to tell a story where HAM radio was instrumental in getting Life Flight to an injured person on a mountain. This incident took place on Labour Day Weekend of September, 2015.
On Labour day weekend of every year my wife’s family has a reunion. She comes from a big family, so it’s a large group of people. We all camp out for three or four days in what’s known as 3rd Creek. It’s a campground in a canyon eight to ten miles east of Malad, in the mountains between Malad and Preston, Idaho. While there, we do a lot of four wheeling. Some of us go fishing and other things.
Sunday morning of Labor Day weekend we decided to go four wheeling. There are a few of us that usually don’t go out on four wheelers on Sunday, but for some reason, a group of us decided to go. There were 10 machines and 13 riders. We took a trail that goes to Oxford Mountain, which is two hours from camp by four wheeler. The way is only possible by four wheeler, motorcycle, as hikers or by horse. Cars and trucks can’t access the trails past camp.
Later in the day we arrived just short of Oxford Peak. Instead of navigating to the peak, which was rife with shale and steep terrain, we planned to take an intersecting trail that looped back to camp. At that moment one of our riders had an accident. The machine rolled over, end over end and we knew right away that he was injured pretty badly. We didn’t want to risk moving or trying to take him back to camp over the bumpy, uneven trail. We had to get help to our location.
Despite being able to see down into the valley below, nobody had cell service. I got my HAM radio out of the back of the four wheeler and put out a call to the Intermountain Intertie, a system of linked repeaters covering parts of Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and other states. I gave my call sign, announced I had an emergency and wanted someone to make a 911 call for me. Within moments, a gentleman from Ennis Montana replied, probably using the Sawtell Island park repeater, and said “I’m not in a location where I can make a call right away, see if someone else can”. Another person, "Bil" or K8MPW, responded from Wendell, Idaho and said “I can help you”. I gave him the phone number for the local Sherrif and asked him to relay a message to get help. Bil got the dispatcher on the phone, who was also a HAM radio operator.
The dispatcher used telephone and his radio to communicate with us and we discussed the situation. He called the EMTs in Malad to coordinate with Search and Rescue, who also had four wheelers, to come to us for help. While I was communicating via the HAM radio, my son had hiked around the mountain to a location where he could use his cell phone. He didn’t know we had been able to make contact using the HAM radio. He called 911 and ended up calling into the same dispatcher we were talking with.
My wife was down in camp. She had no idea anything was awry until she noticed an ambulance coming up the road towards camp. Someone from camp talked to the rescue crew and they said “someone named Daniels called about an injured rider”. My wife instantly went to the radio in the truck and was able to listen to my communication with the dispatcher. She wasn’t a licensed HAM operator at the time, so she didn’t transmit, but was able to listen to what was transpiring. At the time the dispatcher and I were discussing Life Flight because we had realized it would take rescuers too long to bring help by four wheeler. My wife listened with baited breath to know more detail about who was hurt and to what extent.
Less than 45 minutes later a Life Flight from Burly, Idaho landed at our location on the mountain. They were able to take our injured rider to the Pocatello Port Neuf Hospital and get him the care he needed. He made a complete recovery with not much more than severe bruising. We were grateful we had the option to solicit professional help instead of risk adding serious injury by hauling him back to camp in such physically demanding circumstances.
While we did eventually get cell service during the incident, HAM radio started our communication quickly when time mattered. It linked multiple parties together in a way that telephone often can’t. We used it from start to finish. My wife vowed to never again be without a HAM radio license in case something like this happened again. She got her license shortly after that.
