Forest fire at night

How can CKTZ best support its listeners during an emergency?

Cortes Radio is conducting an emergency communications survey, which you will find on their website.

“We’re trying to find out what the community wants in terms of emergency communication, and what CKTZ can provide. I think that it’s a really important project, so I hope that people will take the 30 seconds that it takes to fill out a survey and consider honestly what it is that they feel our community radio can offer them in a emergency event,” said CLIO FM, who’s in charge of this project. 

David Rousseau, one of the volunteers who helped set up CKTZ’s backup antenna in early January 2018 – Photo by Roy L Hales

There are paper copies of the survey at the Co-op, as well stores across the island. There is also an online version at Cortes Radio.ca.

The survey includes questions like:

  • Do you have a battery or hand crank radio as part of your home emergency kit?
  • How do you think Cortes Community Radio could best support local residents during an emergency or extreme weather situation?
  • What information is most important to you in an emergency broadcast?

The Cortes Community Radio Society was established in 2004 and Article 2.g of its’ constitution  states that one of the station’s purposes is “to establish an ongoing community radio station that can broadcast important information to the community in cooperation with emergency services.”

On August 29, 2017 the station signed a  Memorandum of understanding with Strathcona Regional District, stating its willingness to provide temporary usage of the station during emergencies.

As SRD Protective services co-ordinator Shaun Koopman explained,”the Strathcona Regional District has signed a memorandum of understanding with the awesome folks at CKTZ at 89.5 FM to serve as the Strathcona Regional District’s direct emergency operation center public broadcasting system. Information is aid. Messaging saves lives. So to have a method for our local government to send you and a message that will be broadcasted exactly as it is, exactly as we ask them to send it out at a community level, is an exponential aid to the residents that we intend to serve after a major emergency.” 

I (Roy Hales) was the President of Cortes Radio who signed that document, but the push to develop Cortes Radio emergency communications came through Barry and Amanda Glickman and their relationship with Koopman.  

In January 2018, Cortes Radio received one of the first packet radio systems in Northern Vancouver Island. This gives us a direct link to the Emergencies Operation Centre which will function when the grid goes down. A back-up antenna was installed above the station that same day. 

That same year, the station received a ‘radio in a box,’ this is a  compact system when fully operational can broadcast over 130 kms. 

DJ Lorne Gottschewski making the first broadcast over CKTZ’s ‘Radio in a box’ on July 19, 2021. Alex Michaels, from the Campbell River Emergency Communications Team is squatting beside him. Barry Glickman, then Vice President of CKTZ and station manager Howie Roman are in the radio station tent behind him. – Photo by Roy L Hales

On July 19, 2019, 2019, Koopman brought a team of volunteers from Campbell River and Gold River to participate in the first successful test of ‘radio in a box.’ 

For about twenty minutes, CKTZ stopped broadcasting throughout 99% of its area while we performed the first successful test of ‘Radio-in-a-box’ in front of the station at Mansons Landing, Cortes Island.

DJ Lorne Gottschewski, from CKTZ’s ‘Eclectic Selection,’ announced “We’re testing the CKTZ emergency broadcast system. Please be patient, we will return to normal programming any moment.” 

It was shortly after noon during Mansons Friday Market. One of the photos taken that day shows Barry Glickman and Howie Roman in the CKTZ booth. Amanda Glickman and Alex Michaels, from the Campbell River Emergency Communications Team are in one of the others. A cluster of spectators assembled to watch us. Koopman muttered that he wished we’d let him know it was market day! 

Then Sharon Johnson, from the Gold River Emergency Communication Team, reported, “I was just down by the Co-op and I could hear the broadcast coming through the ‘radio-in-a-box.’ It was a little scratchy, but came through okay.”

That was three years ago. ’Radio in a box’ is still kept at the station, to be deployed in the advent of a major emergency. The drawback of this system is that it currently does not have enough power to broadcast over large areas. 

Sean Coyote, CKTZ’s technical officer, explained, “We have talked about buying an amplifier for it. This is not your normal stereo amplifier. We’re talking about an RF radio amplifier that takes a small power output, like one or two watts from the ‘radio in a box’ and amplifies it up to 80 or 90 watts, which would be enough to broadcast from the ‘antenna in a tree,’ once we get that project up there.”

He is referring to another CKTZ emergency communications project, putting a backup antenna in one of the trees beside the station. If the weather permits, this could occur in a few days.

CKTZ used to keep broadcasting for hours after the grid went down. One day it kept working for 14 hours and it was usually good for at least 9. 

Coyote explained that this has not been occurring this winter because the inverter, which turns the 12 volt power from the battery bank into 120 volt power for the tower, needs to be replaced. As the work needs to be done while the station is on the air, they are waiting for a dry, fairly warm day – with no wind.

“At that point we would be back to running that nine to 12 hours when the power goes out,” said Coyote.

That’s a little background from CKTZ’s past. The Glickmans now live in Campbell River. Howie Roman is no longer the station manager, and we have a new president.

One of the questions in the survey is ‘would you like to learn more about volunteering with Cortes Community Radio’s Emergency Communications team?’ 

Clio FM spoke about the possibility that the stations DJs could step forward, but everyone is welcome.

This post was originally published on Feb 24 and reaired Feb 26 as part of the Saturday Round-up.

Top image credit: While a major earthquake is expected to strike this area sometime in the next 50 years, forest fires are the most likely emergency on Cortes Island. There have not been any fires larger than 10 hectares since records started in 1950, but this may change with global conditions. Photo by Lukas Schlagenhauf via Flickr (CC BY SA, 2.0 License)

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