Maybe in your specific area public safety radio systems are not well reinforced, but that's certainly not the case everywhere. Here in earthquake country, it's common for radio sites to have 24 hours of battery backup plus generators on site with several days worth of fuel. Many sites are also starting to add solar panels. Contracts are in place to deliver fuel at periodic intervals to keep the systems running. Add in a shore power connection, and a trailerable generator can be brought on site.
Since the last 2 moderate to large quakes in the state, and the two largest in the past 20 years, occurred within 20 miles of the house here, we have suffered over 100,000 after shocks since July of 2019 (only about 1200 - 1500 of them were large enough to feel here at the house), and we are still suffering ~25 aftershocks every day, I think this might qualify as "earthquake country". Since statehood there have been 4 recorded 7.0 or larger quakes within 75 miles of the house, and a whole lot of 5's and 6's.
Yes, I know public service stuff is well suited to emergency power for periods of time, and that is why I did not pick 2 or 7 days in my examples, but 14 or 28 or longer. I have little doubt that they can keep most comms working for a week if we are talking about a 100 mile radius being impacted, even for a relatively dense population center. But what if it was a larger area and several large population centers were seriously impacted? Sure, they can absolutely keep comms to some key areas going, no question, but there are not enough pre-positioned alternate power sources to keep the majority of comms up over a really extended area.
We, as a nation, have been very fortunate (and part of that is preparation, which is improving all the time) that even for our "bad" disasters we have been comparatively well prepared. The size of the nation, the diversity in probable and potential disaster scenarios, means that the USA is one of the worst case situations to be prepared for things. We talk about preparations being failures when power is down in a limited area for 14 days after a major storm or other event, because the population is jaded to it all, the majority think it can't happen much worse than that.
They are wrong.
A really large series of quakes, which does have the potential, even the probability, of actually happening along combined faults including the SAF, the Sierra Nevada, the Garlock faults, Walker lane, and the Eastern California Shear Zone, could realistically disrupt all (not just some) of the major transmission lines into the entirety of Southern California. Every single major transmission line into the area either crosses or runs along (sometimes for extended distances) major fault lines. It would be a case of not one 100 kV+ line going down, but several, along significant stretches, and several major distribution points being impacted. That would cause a situation were it would be, not could be, but rather would be, months to reestablish power to large areas. You could throw every resource in the US at it and it would still be months, no matter how hard you work it takes time to fabricate things like transformers, towers, and HV switch gear, and there are a limited number of those spares on hand in the nation.
Under such conditions the contractors prepared to deliver fuel eventually would not get the fuel they need to to get to the sites.
Now, I am not a doom and gloom, death porn, kind of guy, but scientist say such an event is almost inevitable, the only question is when. It could be tomorrow or it could be 250 years from now. That makes it a real possibility to me, not a conspiracy nutter kind of thing.
I know we have ridden out a 6.4 and then 36 hours later a 7.1 with direct line of sight to the epicenters. I lost power for all of 15 seconds. We personally were, and are, earthquake (and consequently other event) prepared. Our biggest issue, other than the wife being a bit upset by the events, was the water that slopped out of the fish tanks onto the carpet and the fact that 4 of my favorite Scotch glasses fell out of a cupboard and broke. I also did lose a couple of antennas, but had others to take up the slack. For a couple of days we turned it into a reason to camp out on the property, sleeping outside instead of in the house, while we waited to see if further large events would take place. I have power backup on hand that can run our well for about 40 days (running it long enough each day to refill the storage tank), so assuming the well casing is not damaged we have fresh, pretty much unlimited, water for that duration. If I can get more diesel I can extend that. I could work something out from the solar system to drive the well, but that would cost me what the solar system is running, which is currently all of my communications gear but can include things like the refrigerator and air conditioning if needed. We have supplies on hand to easily, comfortably, literally no change from today, last 45+ days with no power, no water, no communications, no supplies, and no support outside our own fence line. If it looked like it might be longer than that we could reduce / modify some usage / consumption and extend it pretty easily to 90+ days with only moderate considerations.
If we ever need to exercise that kind of preparedness I think that communications, including emergency communications, might be down to a few sources, and I think that might, would in my case, include ham radio.
And that is a key to why I think ham radio has a part in emergency communications. I don't normally view it to augment the functions of police, fire, or ambulance, although if required it probably could help there. I view it to carry information that those services do not want the traffic of. News, messages, and contact in and out of a region, filling the ever decreasing gaps in public service and general communications, things like that. That is "emergency" communications to me, communications when other things break down, which in a bad enough situation they will do, even if such a bad situation is nearly beyond reasonable thought.
T!
