Emergency communication procedure
Distress, urgency and safety signals, traffic priority, and what to do if you are the one who hears the call.
6 minute read
Emergency communication is one of the reasons the amateur service exists and one of the reasons governments continue to allocate spectrum to it. The procedures are examinable and worth knowing properly.
The three signal levels
DISTRESS — MAYDAY (voice) / SOS (Morse) Grave and imminent danger to a vessel, aircraft, vehicle or person, requiring immediate assistance. This is the highest priority. Everything else stops.
URGENCY — PAN PAN (voice) / XXX (Morse) A very urgent message concerning the safety of a station or person, but without the immediate danger that justifies distress. A serious medical situation that is not immediately life-threatening, for example.
SAFETY — SECURITE (voice) / TTT (Morse) A message about navigational or meteorological safety.
The ordering matters: distress outranks urgency, which outranks safety, which outranks everything routine.
SOS
In Morse, SOS is sent as a single run-together character with no gaps between the letters:
...---...It was chosen because that rhythm is unmistakable, not because the letters stand for anything.
If you hear a distress call
Any station hearing a distress call is obliged to render assistance. If no other station responds:
- Acknowledge the call so the station in distress knows it has been heard.
- Obtain the essentials — location, nature of the emergency, number of people involved, assistance required.
- Relay to the appropriate authority — police, coastguard, disaster management, whoever is relevant.
- Maintain contact if you can, and keep the frequency clear.
Write the information down as you receive it. You will not remember it accurately under pressure.
Frequency discipline during an emergency
The commonest failure during real incidents is not equipment — it is congestion. Well-meaning stations calling to offer help, asking for updates, or relaying information nobody asked for.
If you are not handling emergency traffic:
- Stay off the frequency.
- Listen.
- Transmit only if you have something the net actually needs — a relay path it lacks, or information it has asked for.
Why amateurs matter here
Amateur radio works when the infrastructure everyone else relies on has failed. No cell towers, no internet backhaul, no mains power — a battery, a radio and a wire antenna still function. That independence is the whole value, and it only pays off if operators know the procedure before the day they need it.
Being disciplined on the air during an emergency is a technical skill, and it is the one most worth practising in advance.