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CX2SA > ARES 21.05.23 14:00l 362 Lines 20487 Bytes #999 (0) @ ARRL
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Subj: The ARES E-Letter - 05/2023
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To : ARES@ARRL
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The ARES E-Letter
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#Editor: Rick Palm, K1CE May 17, 2023
- ARES© Briefs, Links
- Dayton Hamvention© EmComm Programs -- Not to be Missed
- Improving ARES© Service to a Served Agency: Alachua (Florida) ARES
Developments
- K1CE for a Final: Service DENIED
- ARES© Resources
- ARRL Resources
ARES© Briefs, Links
-------------------
National Hurricane Center (NHC) Amateur Radio station WX4NHC operators will
be on the air for their Annual Communications Test on Saturday, May 27,
2023, from 9 AM-5 PM EDT (1300Z-2100Z). This will be the station's 43rd year
of public service operations at NHC. The purpose of this event is to test
WX4NHC amateur radio equipment and antennas at NHC as well as operators'
home equipment, antennas, and computers prior to this year's hurricane
season, which starts June 1 and runs through November 30. This event is
beneficial for operators worldwide to exercise communication modes,
protocols, and techniques in advance of times of severe weather. Julio
Ripoll, WD4R, Assistant Coordinator, WX4NHC, said "We will be making brief
contacts on many frequencies and modes, exchanging signal reports and basic
weather data (sun, rain, wind speed, temperature, etc.) with any station in
any location." WX4NHC will be on the air on HF, VHF, UHF, 2- and 30-meter
APRS, and Winlink wx4nhc@winlink.org, with the subject line containing
"//WL2K."
"We will try to stay on the Hurricane Watch Net frequency 14.325 MHz most of
the time," Ripoll said. Also, 7.268 MHz will be checked periodically,
depending on propagation. "However, we will be operating on different
frequencies depending on QRM. You may be able to find us on HF by using one
of the DX spotting networks, such as the DX Summit service," he said. "We
will also be on the VoIP Hurricane Net 4 PM - 5 PM EDT (2000-2100Z) (IRLP
node 9219/EchoLink WX-TALK Conference node 7203)." WX4NHC will also make a
few contacts on local VHF and UHF repeaters as well as the Florida Statewide
SARNET system to test the station's equipment.
QSL cards are available via WD4R. Please send your card with a S.A.S.E. Do
not send QSLs directly to the Hurricane Center address, as processing will
be delayed. Due to Federal Agency security measures, no visitors will be
allowed entry to the NHC. For more information about WX4NHC, please visit
its website. "We look forward to your participation in the WX4NHC Annual
Station Test event," concluded Ripoll.
The National Hurricane Conference held last month in New Orleans, Louisiana,
featured the popular Amateur Radio Workshop on Monday, April 3. The
conference theme was to improve hurricane preparedness. The Amateur Radio
Workshop video has been uploaded to YouTube.
One of the major pioneers of hospital emergency communications, David Otey,
WB6NER, passed away on April 14, 2023. For over 25 years, Otey dedicated
himself to hospital emergency communications, especially in the San
Francisco Bay area. The hospital radio nets he established remain in use
today. One of his greatest accomplishments was the integration and equipping
of Kaiser Permanente hospitals in California with amateur radio equipment
and trained volunteer operators. Otey was also a founding member of the
California Disaster Medical Assistance Team and most recently was supporting
operations in Haiti. Otey was a member of the Oakland Radio Communications
Association (ORCA) and past president. -- Duane Mariotti, WB9RER, Orange,
California, Kaiser Permanente Amateur Radio Network (KPARN)
Carroll County, Mississippi, Emergency Coordinator George Gillespie, KF5IAY,
reports that the county ARES net was activated on March 29 when a tornado
threatened the area. The tornado passed on the ground through the Blackhawk
community. The home of Reggie Daves, KI5HKE, took a direct hit -- the only
available communication for help was his handheld. Traffic was monitored and
passed through the EOC. "This I firmly believe not only helped with rescues,
but saved lives," said Gillespie.
The Florida Department of Emergency Management (FDEM) and the Florida
Communications Unit have announced the opening of the registration window
for Operation: MARConi 2 -- advanced communication unit training for 2023.
"MARConi 2" will be held in Florida Region 5, hosted in Lake County from May
21 through May 26. An AUXCOMM component as well as the COMT and MARC (Mutual
Aid Radio Communications) practitioner tracks will be included.
All applications will be reviewed and emails sent to individuals approved to
attend. Please make sure to get your application in as soon as possible, as
there are a limited number of slots available per region. The target
audience for this workshop are personnel assigned to a MARC or EDICS unit,
and other working incident communications personnel (COML, COMT, etc) who
have agency recommendation.
AuxComm-focused training will be conducted Sunday, May 21, ending on
Wednesday, May 24. Public Safety-focused training will begin Monday, May 22,
ending on Friday, May 26. Registration is open. Number of participants may
be limited by region, by county, or by team and current training level. View
flyer. Register. Send email to staff.
Correction -- In the last issue, a summary of major emergency operations
over the past hundred years had an error: The 1948 Vanport flood was in
Oregon, not Washington. Vanport was in the northeastern part of Portland,
and was near some of the ship building yards. It was extremely hard hit by
the flood. -- Jeremy Tanzer, KI7BDP, Assistant Emergency Coordinator for
Training, Clackamas Amateur Radio Emergency Service (CARES) Director
Dayton Hamvention© EmComm Programs -- Not to be Missed
------------------------------------------------------
The Dayton Hamvention©, Xenia, Ohio, is this week -- Friday through Sunday,
May 19, 20, and 21. There are several forums of interest to the EmComm
community, including the following:
A Partnership to Save Lives, Friday, 1:10 to 2:30 PM in Room 2 -- NOAA's
National Weather Service (NWS) is working to build a Weather-Ready Nation,
one that is more resilient and better prepared to respond to extreme weather
and water events. The NWS depends on partnerships to help build a
Weather-Ready Nation and to help achieve the overarching mission to protect
lives and property. One of these important partnerships is with amateur
radio groups. This presentation will describe this partnership and how it
helps to save lives during severe weather events.
ARES© Forum, Saturday, 12 to 1:20 PM, Room 3 -- The Amateur Radio Emergency
Service© consists of licensed amateurs who have volunteered their
qualifications and equipment with their local ARES leadership for
communications duty when disaster strikes. Learn about opportunities to
volunteer and train, and hear stories about best practices, the importance
of building mutually beneficial relationships with local emergency
management services, and the importance of our partnerships with served
agencies. Sponsored by ARRL The National Association for Amateur Radio© and
conducted by ARRL Director of Emergency Management (DEM) Josh Johnston,
KE5MHV.
Improving ARES© Service to a Served Agency: Alachua (Florida) ARES
------------------------------------------------------------------
Developments
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By Leland Gallup, AA3YB
ARES volunteers need to be accepted by the agency or other entity they
serve. Why? Isn't being a technically skilled amateur radio operator enough
to be of effective help to a served agency? No -- there has to be acceptance
of the amateur radio group by the served agency. Acceptance of ARES©
volunteers is an essential component of effective amateur service.
Acceptance involves integration into a wide range of served agency
activities. Without served agency acceptance, hams are often shown the door,
even in an emergency. So how do you know if your ARES© group is really
accepted by your served agency? If your group serves a county Emergency
Management (EM) agency, how do you know if your group is a truly integrated
part of its Emergency Support Function 2 (ESF-2 Communications) planning and
administration? Integration is more than just going through the process of
registering volunteers with the EM, more than undergoing background checks,
and more than being "badged" for service at designated emergency shelters --
as important as all those things are when serving a public authority like an
EM agency.
Acceptance means your served agency views you -- in effect -- as one of them.
Acceptance goes far beyond activating an emergency operations center radio
room. It means ARES© volunteers doing whatever their EM officials want them
to do and doing what they are comfortable doing. It's not about
communications alone. The path to agency acceptance begins with face time
with your EM department, which is absolutely critical for gaining acceptance
and integration into EM operations. Face time is the way to establish
personal relationships with EM staff. It means regularly showing up at the
agency (this may require a lot of effort to achieve). It means learning how
the EM does business. It means understanding the National Response
Framework, the National Incident Management System, and the Incident Command
System. It means acting and dressing professionally. It means following
through with requested tasks and being reliable. Acceptance is like trust --
it must be earned.
So, what exactly can EM acceptance and integration of ARES© volunteers look
like? I suggest one way you'll know is when your EM asks you for assistance
-- not just during an emergency activation when the skies are threatening,
but during times of "blue skies," too. And not necessarily as communicators,
but as support staff for their training events. This is what is now
beginning to happen for Alachua County (Florida) ARES©. Alachua ARES' served
agency is the Alachua County EM. After years of effort, ARES is establishing
acceptance and integration into Alachua's EM.
"Reunification" Functional Exercise
On March 1, 2023, the county EM conducted what is called a "reunification"
functional exercise conducted under doctrine of the Department of Homeland
Security's Exercise Evaluation Program (HSEEP). An HSEEP functional exercise
is one in which there is no kinetic activity as such; that is, no equipment
or personnel is moved around from place to place. The "play" is one in which
a variety of emergency support functions (ESF) would interact over the
course of the exercise, and their performance would be evaluated against
goals and quantified objectives. Exercise players work to fashion the
connections among responders that would be so critical in a real event. The
exercise scenario was a mass casualty incident (MCI) requiring fire/rescue,
law enforcement, the Florida District 8 medical examiner, mental health
services, local medical facilities and the Alachua EM. All of these
emergency support functions (ESFs) would be expected to develop and carry
out a way to meet the public's critical need for information --
specifically, the whereabouts and condition of family members and loved
ones. As is often the case in MCIs, the exercise scenario required the EM
and ESFs to stand up a "reunification" center, to which concerned members of
the public could go for information.
In late 2022, Alachua EM asked ARES© to provide volunteer EM support staff
to help run the exercise. ARES members would be "controllers," meaning that
they would help the EM execute the exercise play and support player setup
and coordination. Our members were NOT asked to provide communications
support to the EM, but to act FOR the EM in making the exercise happen. This
meant that ARES would be a trusted agent for the EM, integrated completely
with the EM staff, in dealing with a host of public safety, health, and
government agencies.
In the event, five Alachua ARES volunteers reported to the reunification
site. During the hours of exercise preliminaries, the exercise itself, and
post-exercise site breakdown, ARES volunteers did whatever the EM's
principal center controller asked us to do. This involved site setup, player
check-ins, exercise coordination, site breakdown, and the management of
exercise "actors." Because the exercise "cause" was an MCI, the concept
called for player interaction with fictional members of the public. To make
for a realistic scenario, EM recruited students from the Santa Fe College
Public Safety Academy to play the role of family members and loved ones
trying to find out what had happened to the "victims" and others. In this
capacity, their roles called for them to play out an array of emotional
responses as they were given notifications, including fatalities. More than
20 such "actors" contributed enormously to the realism of the exercise, and
our ARES members were instrumental in making this all happen.
How did ARES do? The emergency manager herself (who was the lead controller
at the reunification center) praised our volunteers as "self-directing
professionals who did anything needed to assist in making the exercise
work." Moreover, other ESF "players" at the center saw ARES© volunteers as
professional, dedicated, highly capable "force multipliers" for the Alachua
EM. The impressions made, and relationships established, will stand us in
good stead as we approach the 2023 hurricane season. This is what acceptance
is all about. The four Alachua hams that volunteered for this event were
Brett Wallace, NH2KW; David Huckstep, W4JIR; Wendell Wright, KN4TWS; and
Eric Pleace, KO4ZSD. The fifth Alachua volunteer was Leland Gallup, AA3YB,
author of this article.
These professional-grade amateurs are a credit to hams everywhere. They look
the part of pros because that is what they are. The bottom line is simple:
if you want acceptance for your ARES© group, start at the beginning -- build
personal relationships with your served agency. Be professional. Be aware
that you serve them, not the other way around. Do whatever they want you to
do that you feel you can do. Do it now, when the skies are blue, so that
when the skies are dark you can truly serve your served agency. And, by the
way, be skilled, trained, and competent amateur radio operators! - QST NFL -
newsletter of the ARRL Northern Florida Section, April 2023 issue
K1CE for a Final: Service DENIED
--------------------------------
Last month, I was privileged to deploy and serve a minor role in a major
Florida exercise -- the ARRL Simulated Emergency Test (SET), dubbed "Service
DENIED" -- as a shelter radio operator. The scenario was as follows: ". . .
news stations across the state have reported mass outages of all
telecommunications services throughout the state of Florida due to a cyber
attack. Service outages began with internet service being unavailable, but
the outages have since spread to cellular and traditional voice
communications methods. As the minutes go by the situation continues to
worsen with sweeping blackouts in various portions of the state. Panic is
evident among the citizens as roads become gridlocked in an attempt to buy
supplies, groceries, and fuel in fears that supply may not be available.
Additionally, lines at banks begin to form due to fears that credit and
debit cards may be unusable, and citizens begin withdrawing cash at an
alarming rate. Fuel supplies and stored batteries have gradually been
drained down as this disaster has worn on, and at this point you are nearing
the end of conventional backup energy sources."
My assignment was to report to a local shelter (a public library) and assist
public safety professionals there with deployment of a Mutual Aid Radio
Communications (MARC) vehicle. The task was to erect the 50-foot mobile
aluminum tower with amateur radio antennas mounted on it and provide message
and SITREP communications. (We are located in very rural Columbia County, in
northern Florida bordering Georgia.) We were to provide remote command and
relay for all south county traffic, and establish communications with
SARnet, the statewide 70 cm FM repeater network, NCS, EOC, and Relay on both
Tactical and Command Nets. VHF, UHF and HF was to be used as needed. For
shelter operations, our job was to receive and transmit Health and Welfare
radiograms.
I worked with Jim Taylor, KQ4CIJ, a quiet, unflappable communicator of
professional grade, at the library parking lot exercise site. When things
started to unravel, Jim remained cool, calm, and collected as we worked
through a major problem. He is exactly the kind of operator anyone would
want to have on their team or as a partner. The problem: We quickly realized
why these kinds of exercises are conducted in the first place -- the
antennas mounted on top of the 50-foot tower would not work (we had used the
coax cables supplied with the vehicle). We then tried a handheld with no
luck, and finally resorted to using my Icom IC-9700 with 100 W FM into my
vehicle's rooftop 5/8 wavelength mag-mounted whip, which provided the
necessary coverage: the work-around scenario worked.
I'll have more on this exercise in next month's issue after the After-Action
Report/Improvement Plan (AAR/IP) is drafted, approved, and published. I'd
like to offer special thanks to ARRL/ARES Columbia County EC Brad Swartz,
N5CBP, for his excellent leadership and cool-under-fire approach for our
ARES SET response. -- Rick Palm, K1CE
ARES© Resources
---------------
Download the ARES Manual [PDF]
ARES Field Resources Manual [PDF]
ARES Standardized Training Plan Task Book [Fillable PDF]
ARES Standardized Training Plan Task Book [Word]
ARES Plan
ARES Group Registration
Emergency Communications Training
The Amateur Radio Emergency Service© (ARES) consists of licensed amateurs
who have voluntarily registered their qualifications and equipment, with
their local ARES leadership, for communications duty in the public service
when disaster strikes. Every licensed amateur, regardless of membership in
ARRL or any other local or national organization is eligible to apply for
membership in ARES. Training may be required or desired to participate fully
in ARES. Please inquire at the local level for specific information. Because
ARES is an amateur radio program, only licensed radio amateurs are eligible
for membership. The possession of emergency-powered equipment is desirable,
but is not a requirement for membership.
How to Get Involved in ARES: Fill out the ARES Registration form and submit
it to your local Emergency Coordinator.
ARRL Resources
--------------
Join or Renew Today! Eligible US-based members can elect to receive QST or
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Subscribe to NCJ -- the National Contest Journal. Published bimonthly,
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* CX2SA 1978-2023 - Salto Uruguay *
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