Who gets listed
Organizations that help Washington residents stay in touch in an emergency, in three kinds:
- Community mesh networks: volunteer groups running LoRa (Meshtastic, MeshCore, Reticulum) or ham (AREDN) meshes. A listing shows the protocol and radio settings exactly as the group publishes them, with a link to the group’s own page that states them.
- Neighborhood emergency hub programs, such as Seattle Community Emergency Hubs. We list the program, never individual hub sites or the volunteers who run them.
- Emergency comms groups: ARES, ACS and RACES units, CERT programs, ham and GMRS clubs, and makerspace or library programs.
To be listed, an organization needs its own public website (a chat invite alone isn’t enough), a page that shows what it does, and the Washington counties it covers. Groups based in Oregon, Idaho or British Columbia are listed when their coverage reaches Washington, and shown on Near the border. No one can pay to be listed, ranked or removed, and a listing is not an endorsement.
Every new or changed listing is reviewed by a person before it is published. Lists are alphabetical.
What we check
- Sources. Each fact cites a source, with the date it was accessed, and the listing shows when it was last verified.
- Settings. A mesh’s protocol and settings must match a value on the group’s own page.
- Programs. Hub, CERT and ACS programs are checked against the city or county’s own page.
- Activity. When a group’s own site or public code repository shows a dated post, event or update in the last 12 months, the listing says “Public activity found” with the month. When there isn’t one, it says nothing. This never hides or reorders a listing.
What we never publish
- People. No names of members, officers, hub captains or volunteers, even when an organization’s own site names them.
- Callsigns. No amateur or GMRS callsigns, including club callsigns. The site’s build fails if one appears.
- Phone numbers and personal email. Organizations are reached through their own site, a contact form, or a role address they publish (such as info@).
- Node maps and positions. We never embed, copy or screenshot node maps or node lists, and listings have no map pins. Coverage is shown by county, in the group’s own words. Many people run a node at home, so even an approximate position can point to a house.
- Repeater lists. We link to repeater directories but never copy them.
Sources we use, and sources we don’t
We use: groups’ own websites and public code repositories; Meshtastic’s local groups page; government emergency management, CERT and ACS pages; FCC rules (eCFR) and Washington law (RCW); the National Weather Service; Washington Emergency Management; FCC outage reports; and submissions from the groups themselves.
We don’t use: Discord or other chat content and member lists; Google Maps; node maps or MQTT feeds; bulk data from repeater directories, whose terms forbid it; FCC license records to look up individuals; anything behind bot protection; or hub volunteers’ contact details.
Guides
Guides are dated, say which firmware or plan version they were written for, and state what each tool does not do. They never promise coverage, call a radio setting legal or illegal, or suggest that anything replaces 911. Kits use generic specs, with no affiliate links and no paid product mentions.
Corrections and removals
If something is wrong, or you’re a group that wants its listing updated or removed, email hello@pacwesthub.com with a link to the page and a source we can check. If anything here identifies a person, tell us and we’ll remove it promptly.