Winds leave MARA high and dry

WASILLA – The Matanuska Amateur Radio Association needs help recovering from the latest bout of high winds.

The group says that as winds tore through the Mat-Su Valley Jan. 12, they knocked over a tree that fell on the group’s trailer.

“When the tree came down it sort of broke the back of the trailer and kind of crushed in one side and bulged out the side,” said Don Bush, the group’s Mat-Su District Emergency Coordinator.

The trailer had been sitting near the home of one of the group’s members. He’d just finished upgrading it and the group decided to leave it staged there since it was headed that weekend to cover a dog sled race on Knik Lake.

Bush said the group was able to salvage all of the radio equipment inside, but needs a new trailer. The association is a nonprofit and is taking donations to replace the trailer. If someone has a good sized car-hauler-type trailer in good shape to donate that would be great. Otherwise, the group needs $15,000 to buy a new one, insulate it and install all the equipment.

He said that donations have been trickling in from amateur radio groups elsewhere in the country and the world. Donations can be made at the group’s website, kl7jfu.com.

The association is actually incorporated as part of the borough’s emergency response plan as a backup in case primary communication goes down.

“We set up networks that if they lose their regular commercial communications we have our own systems that we deploy HAMs out to the various places where they need to be,” he said.

During flooding along the Little Susitna River in 2006, the group was activated to bolster communications. Members were also called out during the Miller’s Reach fire in 1996 that destroyed a large portion of Big Lake.

The group also works with the Red Cross, which could call the group in if it needs some kind of communication link to a shelter. The trailer is something of a mobile command center. Bush said it’s also used at public events like sled dog races, marathons, bike races and charity walks.

“We’ve been everywhere from Homer up to Willow,” he said. “We can come in and provide almost any type of communications they need at any location.”

He said the club has been around since the mid-seventies. A lot of its activities have to do with ham radios. The group sets up certain times of day for members to get on a certain frequency and talk to each others. Sometimes they pass along greetings from people to far-flung friends and relatives.

“People like sending greetings to their loved ones and in some places you don’t have a way of getting regular mail,” he said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.