Communication in the first minutes of a life-threatening emergency is key to whether victims survive.
Communication with the general public in the hours and days following any catastrophic event can determine if ordinary people can effectively come together to help themselves and to care for others.
In the Sun Valley area, new equipment and growing numbers of trained amateur radio operators mean that the next time disaster strikes it may be easier to bring help quickly to someone injured in the backcountry or to inform the public about what's happening.
Donor-funded repeater stations on Bald Mountain and at Galena Summit recently opened the local airwaves to amateur radio transmissions that previously had been blocked by high mountains. That's important because cell phone service doesn't exist in an area from north of Ketchum to Stanley.
The repeater stations have already paid big dividends because they enabled amateur radio operators, also called hams, to quickly notify emergency responders about accidents in out-of-the-way places.
The 140 local people who have been trained and licensed as hams will be a valuable resource in future emergencies.
The Castle Rock Fire and last winter's Christmas power outage exposed huge gaps in the ability of local and federal government agencies to get necessary information to the public in the critical early hours and days of an emergency.
The hams can help bridge those gaps and replace confusion with information that can empower people to help themselves. That's far better than being left in the dark.
