South Carolina Focus

When a disaster strikes, communications may become spotty or even gone completely. Cell phone towers may be down, land lines even disrupted, and if the Internet is offline, there goes email. Keeping communications open for hospitals and other health care facilities during these types of crises are what amateur radio operators - or "hams" - train for once a week, as members of the South Carolina Healthcare Emergency Amateur Radio Team, or SC HEART for short. Made up of volunteers from across the state, SC HEART conducts exercises, which it calls Training Nets, from various locations in South Carolina. One recent such exercise was run by ham operator Warren Richey at the Charleston V.A. hospital, with operators listening and checking in from places from Aiken and Darlington County to Pickens and Beaufort - as well as from out of state locations such as Asheville, N.C. "Our goal is to have those amateur radio operators in those hospitals to be able to pass traffic back and forth about the