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Date: 6/28/2023
SOUTHWICK — When Charles Dunlap earned his amateur radio license at the age of 13, he never imagined it would take him around the world before landing him back in town to eventually serve as the director of the Emergency Management Agency.
“I got a lot of miles on my [odometer],” Dunlap, 81, said of his long career in communications.
It started while he was a student at Agawam High School in the late 1950s.
Dunlap, and three other friends who earned their ham radio license, joined Agawam’s Civil Defense Radio Committee, which was where he began to understand the importance of communications, especially in a world consumed with the potential of a nuclear war between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union.
But it was also fun.
“I was always interested in playing around with his radio,” said Dunlap about the time he spent in his uncle’s radio room.
It was his uncle that gave him his first radio. Called a crystal radio, it was essentially the first radio that could pick up low-frequency signals from radio stations around the country and didn’t use vacuum tubes or transistors.
“I used to listen to KDKA in Pittsburgh on that radio,” Dunlap said.
He graduated from Agawam High School in 1960 and at the age of 17 enlisted in the U.S. Air Force. After taking the aptitude test given by the military for all incoming recruits, he scored well enough to be assigned to a top-secret unit where his responsibilities included detecting nuclear bomb atmospheric detonations.
He explained that during the Cold War, the Soviet Union was still conducting aboveground nuclear tests, and when a blast was recorded, his unit was part of an effort from listening stations from around the globe that would triangulate the location of the detonation.
As part of that unit, he was stationed at Shemya Air Force Base, now called Eareckson Air Station, on the island of Shemya, at the western tip of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. He said it had “the worst weather in the world.”
Just how far west was he?
“On a clear day I could look west and see tomorrow,” he said, laughing, explaining the International Date Line passes within miles of Shemya.
At the base was a 10,000-foot runway that was used as an alternative landing location for commercial airliners flying out of Anchorage, Alaska; Honolulu, Hawaii and Tokyo, Japan, he said. It was also later designated as an alternative runway for NASA’s Space Shuttle, he said.
Dunlap completed his four-year stint in the Air Force in 1964, remaining in the reserves for two years. It was then he landed a job with AT&T in Springfield, maintaining communications equipment. From listening to a rudimentary crystal radio in the 1950s, Dunlap found himself in the late 1980s installing one of the very first cell bag phones for a company vice president in New Hampshire, and later helped install some of the very first fiber-optic communication cable in the region.
But life took a turn for him and his wife Pauline — they met in seventh grade and exchanged love notes using Morse code — and their five children, when the country fell into a recession in 1990.
After 25 years, he accepted early retirement from AT&T.
Dunlap did have one lifeline: He had been a volunteer firefighter in Southwick since 1978, and his radio skills were well-known. He began volunteering with what was then known as Civil Defense.
And despite making it clear he didn’t want to be the director of the town’s Civil Defense; he was appointed to the post in July 1992. He used his public and private sector experience to transform the department into what it is now, the town’s Emergency Management Agency.
“Well, I picked it up and ran with it,” he said the appointment.
And run he did.
Today’s Emergency Operations Center in the basement of Town Hall is full of all different types of communication devices, including radios that link it to police, fire, State Police, and the DPW.
It’s set up to serve as a command post in the event of any type of disaster, like the “Snowtober” that happened in October 2011, as a nor’easter slammed into New England wreaking havoc across the region and dumping over a foot of snow in town. The snow was particularly wet and heavy and downed trees, and power lines, throughout the area.
For over a week, residents without a backup generator were without power and the only way the town’s municipal government could operate was using the command center, Dunlap said.
“When it hits the fan, government is run from here,” he said pointing to the banks of radios, video screens, white boards, and a bookcase full of operational manuals on how to respond to disasters from chemical spills to pandemics.
From the command center in the immediate aftermath of the storm, town officials issued continual updates to residents about the recovery process, coordinated fuel and water deliveries, and tried to help residents most in need.
And if power is out everywhere, Town Hall has a generator and the operations center has been wired to allow power to be fed directly into it. It even has power available from on-site batteries.
Given what he’s seen and experienced in natural disasters, Dunlap said most people should be prepared to live for at least 72 hours without power or if stranded in their home as the result of snow, ice, or flooding. And he thinks people, especially in New England, should be prepared to survive for at least two weeks without outside help.
“What happens if you don’t have the medicine you need … or toilet paper?” he asked rhetorically to drive the point home.
After a storied career, Dunlap let the Select Board know a few months ago he is ready to retire and hand over the responsibility of the town being prepared for any emergency to someone else. Officially, he’s leaving on June 30, but odds are, if he’s called for help, he’ll be there, because someone must be when it “hits the fan.”