My neighbors are still working on an emergency communications network in case our neighborhood gets more isolated in a disaster due to failure of local infrastructure. A single tree falling across our road could cut off phones, internet, cell phone backhaul, and motor vehicle transport to the whole mountain. An area-wide problem such as an earthquake or hurricane (both common events in these parts) could wreak worse havoc.
We’ve distributed a number of GMRS radios around the ‘hood, and we have weekly sessions where everyone checks in just to get folks in the habit of keeping the radios charged, knowing where they are, and being comfortable operating them. I think we also need an asynchronous system, too. In a big disaster, people might think to turn on their radios and listen. But in a more localized scenario (down tree again) the people who still have comms available might not know that their neighbors are in trouble.
In April of 2025 I played a bit with LoRa (Long Range) radios running Meshtastic. These tiny radio nodes find each other and will relay 200-character messages from one to another either to broadcast or reach a specific node. You can pair a node with your phone, and the messages will show up with a notification just as text messages do, but they’ll go through even if there is no internet or cellular connections as long as there are enough nodes to connect you with your destination.
Back in April there weren’t any nodes close enough to me to get a reliable connection. Recently, a couple of the radio folks encouraged me to try again, and there are now enough players to make things fairly reliable. In fact, I’ve received messages from people as far away as Honolulu (on O’ahu) and Kahului (Maui).
The radios are small enough and low-power enough and cheap enough (~$20) that they can be mounted on a pole with a small solar panel and battery, and be completely autonomous. We could place them on neighbors’ land where we need to improve coverage, and perhaps even top them with GMRS antennas to improve the range and quality of our voice system.
—2p