It was Friday, September 2nd, 2022, which meant I worked from my home office. I have the VHF radios on low to monitor them in the background. Recently I got into the Allstar node fray with a hotspot. I use it to monitor the FM38 systems (Allstar 2495) in the southern 2/3rds of Wisconsin.
At about 7:45 am I heard the Allstar node come up. An individual in distress was asking for assistance to get an ambulance to him. It was a ham in Brown Deer Wisconsin. he had slipped on his bathroom tile floor and went down so hard he could not get up. he happened to have his handheld with him. (Don’t we all) He did not have access to or was unable to get to the phone and he lived alone.
I got a call into the Brown Deer police call center. The dispatcher got the fire department rolling and then started asking me for more details. I had the dispatcher on speaker phone and he could hear the hams responses to the questions. Being on a handheld and laying prone the signal was at times noisy. At that time both the other ham and I used ITU phonetics to get the exact info out. All those times practicing on the ARES nets made it second nature. The dispatcher was also able to understand the info without my having to repeating it.
It felt good to help out. I also realized it was due to my monitoring that I was able to hear his call. If you are not participating in the weekly local ARES net I would encourage you to do so when you can.
Scott
KG9IV