Same here in King and Snohomish counties last time I checked. The SAR teams have been using repeaters. I agree re better cell coverage for that use case, which would include data that could make SAR teams way more effective by e.g. tracking search team coverage in real-time on a single view shared by the entire response.
A lot of ham culture is around emergency comms, and every now and then it's useful. But a single portable starlink dish absolutely destroys what ham can do. It would allow for e.g. 50 people on a local wifi network all taking comms requests from people in an impacted area, and sharing the same digital 100Mbps link to get those comms requests out. Can even be self serve. Ham requires an operator occupying dedicated spectrum, serving one customer at a time.
A lot of ham culture is around emergency comms, and every now and then it's useful. But a single portable starlink dish absolutely destroys what ham can do. It would allow for e.g. 50 people on a local wifi network all taking comms requests from people in an impacted area, and sharing the same digital 100Mbps link to get those comms requests out. Can even be self serve. Ham requires an operator occupying dedicated spectrum, serving one customer at a time.