ARTICLE ON CLUBS MEMBER
12/31/2004
Hamfest 2008
Story & Photos of all in newpaper in pdf
Story & Photos
By Barb Kromphardt
bkromphardt@bcrnews.com
PRINCETON — The hams were out in full force at the Bureau County Fairgrounds in Princeton Saturday as amateur radio fans attended the annual Hamfest event. The event, sponsored by the Starved Rock Radio Club, serves as a radio, electronic and computer flea market and gives fans a chance to talk “ham.”
“A lot of people don’t even know what hams are, or know that the hobby of ‘hamiteur’ radio exists,” said Frank Carraro, secretary of the SRRC. “We’re a class of people who are interested in electronics and communication.
Carraro said that by taking an examination by the Federal Communications Commission, the hams are issued a
license, giving them the ability to communicate on a whole range of radio bands.
Carraro said hams enjoy amateur radio for a variety of reasons.
“We have a lot of varying interests,” he said. “Some people just like to communicate,
and some people are into it more for technical experimentation; and so we have a lot of little niche interests in it.”
One of those niche interests is the Community Emergency Response Team Program, a federal program that
educates people about disaster preparedness for hazards and trains them in basic disaster response skills,
such as fire safety, light search and rescue, team organization and disaster medical operations.
Joe Tokarz, who attended Sunday’s Hamfest, is the emergency communications coordinator for LaSalle County.
Tokarz said hams are used during emergency drills to keep communication lines open between workers in the field and headquarters.
Tokarz said he and the Ottawa fire chief taught their first CERT class in March 2003, and one young woman in the class complained the entire time.
“All she did was complain, ‘When would I ever use this?’” Tokarz said.
The first class graduated the end of March, and Tokarz said they gave all of the students a
graduation present consisting of a backpack with a hard-hat, goggles, a special tool for turning
off the gas in your house and a first aid kit.
Three weeks later, the tornado hit Utica, and the young woman learned the value of the CERT training.
“The dust settled, she saw the backpack, grabbed her husband, and they walked up and down their block
doing exactly what we taught them to do,” Tokarz said. “Knocking on doors, making
sure her neighbors were safe and turning off gas in the block.”
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