Radio volunteers join Zaca Fire effort

BY ERIC LINDBERG
DAILY SOUND STAFF WRITER

Fire crews fighting the blaze near Zaca Lake are getting a little help from amateur radio operators from Santa Maria and Santa Ynez.
Local groups affiliated with the Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES) are manning roadblock checkpoints leading to the fire, making sure only fire personnel and residents have access.

“We were asked to man those checkpoints 24 hours a day for the next few days,” Richard Gerardi, assistant emergency coordinator for the Santa Maria ARES, told the Daily Sound after coming off a graveyard shift. “There’s a lot of firefighting equipment coming in. Contractors that bring in the water tanks, fire trucks, bulldozers, and a lot of residents. As far as I know, none of the residents have been evacuated.”
Radio volunteers are currently working at road-closure points on Happy Canyon and Figueroa Mountain roads. Gerardi said they typically work six- to eight-hour shifts and estimated that about 10 to 15 people are helping out with the Zaca fire.
The volunteer radio enthusiasts, licensed by the FCC, also use their network of repeaters throughout the wilderness to coordinate with one another and pass along messages from fire officials. The Santa Barbara County Fire Department activated them Saturday morning and Gerardi said they will probably remain deployed until sometime tomorrow.
“I don’t know the current status of the fire,” Gerardi said, “but [on Saturday] they were anticipating needing us through Monday.”
The volunteer group is routinely on call to help firefighting efforts during the fire season, in addition to helping county officials coordinate large bicycle events, marathons or walkathons.
“We’ll either help keep people away from certain areas during fires or guard certain boundaries,” said Gerardi, known to his fellow radio operators by his call sign AA6VX. “We sponsor and maintain a network of repeaters, and we are able to utilize those repeaters to communicate in the valleys and canyons where cell phones don’t reach.”
Amateur radio operators throughout Santa Barbara County also participate in emergency preparedness drills, Gerardi added, citing a recent FEMA drill that simulated a radiological disaster at Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant. Gerardi and others helped set up radio communications between different local agencies.
“We’re radio electronic enthusiasts,” he said, adding, “But because we are licensed to use radio frequencies by the FCC ... it’s not just a hobby, it’s a service.”