Turn the radio on

That’s the first thing I wanted to do on August 21st, as soon as the shaking stopped.

Travelling to the hospital in Baltimore this year, for the first time by public transportation, I asked other passengers for directions, pointing to the visual map emblazoned on the bus shelter so they’d show me. I found out it wasn’t just that famous Miss Teen USA from South Carolina, Caitlin Upton—even the older adults had no map sense. The way anyone knew to offer directions was to turn to their phone and go to Google. Mine didn’t have a data plan, so it wasn’t of much use to me. Or so I thought.

It was by accident I discovered that it was. The GPS function worked without data.

On my next hospital trip I was a boss, using the Maps.Me app to navigate Baltimore’s streets once I got off the train at Camden Yards.

I grew up in an era where you owned several candleholders, and knew exactly where your candles and matches were. Power outages (“blackouts” by another name) were routine. Truthfully, the matches were, logically, always by the stove; it didn’t have electric ignition. You filled water as soon as current went, because that would go next. You had a series of empty containers close at hand for that purpose.

Blackouts weren’t disasters, and those were simple measures; but they were a form of preparedness.

Unlike my mother who taught me to expect that early technology—the electricity distribution grid—would habitually fail, I’ve allowed my life and comforts to become tethered to the functioning of newer, digital technologies. And when they fail, I’m completely ill-prepared for survival. I have no digital-disaster preparedness routine.

One of first things to go down in a disaster is data transmission, Jerome Lynch at the Telecommunications Authority (TATT) told me in a delightful chat. So, once I was sure the earthquake had ended its long orgasm, with current gone and cable television with it, my first instinct was to turn to another older technology. Radio.

Now I’ve got a battery-operated clock-radio in some cupboard in some room in the house, probably without a battery, or with one, green, greasy and crusty, lodged inside.

But there’s another function on mobile phones that works without data: FM radio.

Well, not exactly.

While an over-the-air FM radio tuner is a built-in feature in every mobile phone chipset, until recently many phone manufacturers would disable it, most likely to push users to consume wireless data to listen to radio stations. More recently, as a public safety measure, phonemakers have begun to allow users access to the feature. HTC, LG, Motorola and Samsung all do. Apple, however, is the last major phone manufacturer that has not.

So your lovely, pricey iPhone is not your friend in a disaster. My Blu HD wasn’t either. I complained bitterly in every online forum when I first discovered, and was delighted to see Blu has enabled radio in the new R2 version, and I’ve happily upgraded.

I ended up turning to a different, older-generation Apple device—an old iPod—to reach the radio stations still on the air for critical post-earthquake information.

There’s no local standard requiring mobile handsets sold or imported in TT to be ones that enable radio. TATT is officially “technology neutral.” (Hmmm: Android boxes?) But the Authority does promulgate broad operating standards for phone handsets, related to such matters as radiation and interference. File a complaint to trigger attention to the issue, they suggested.

Where do the main mobile network operators come in? bMobile has just taken itself out of the retail business, leaving decisions about what handsets are used for its service to a plethora of regulation-averse small dealers, many motivated to find the cheapest version of popular technology. But even outside of a disaster, corporate folks at bMobile or Digicel were unreachable for comment.

So so so much was wrong with the state response to last weekend’s devastating flooding. Listening to Stuart Young’s Holy Name-accented combative politicking, opening a disaster briefing where people wanted him to “prioritorise” critical information-sharing, I wanted to weep.

A small thing the state can do for future disasters is require radio transmission be enabled on mobile phones sold here. Maybe you can make it a consumer demand.

• I would fail as a poet trying to eulogise Winston Bailey, especially in the wake of all that’s already been said this week. I’m not sure as a people we’ve ever taken the idea of a calypsonian laureate seriously. Perhaps that sort of formalism just doesn’t fit the artform; such an exercise might stumble into the same pit of irrelevance and disconnection as the Carnival judging that framed Shadow’s early career. But no calypsonian of my lifetime has seized that role more fully than Shadow.