[ARRL-OK] Fw: The ARES E-Letter for February 19, 2014

[Mark Conklin]

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Subject: The ARES E-Letter for February 19, 2014
  


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February 19,
2014Editor: Rick Palm, K1CE
ARES E-Letter Archive
ARES Home
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In This Issue:
 
	* Upcoming Hurricane Conferences 
	* Reports: California Club Supports Statewide
Emergency Medical Exercise 
	* Letters: FEMA Adds Disaster Reporter Feature to
App 
	* Webinars Designed to Prime Public Preparedness
Officials for Amateur Radio Test 
	* Florida Panhandle County ARES Activates for Winter
Storm 
	* Letters: Cherokee County (Georgia) Gets New Call
Sign for Auxiliary Communications 
	* Letters: Coordinating Winlink Tactical Call Signs
for ARES Use 
	* Letters: New Mesh Software Available 
	* Opinion: Training Requirements Turn Away ARES
Candidates 
	* K1CE For a Final 
The ARRL Centennial is a good time to reflect on
the past to help us prepare for the future. In looking at seminal events
in the history of ARRL, and especially ARES, one that is seared into the
minds of us all is Hurricane Katrina, which occurred in late August, 2005.
Here are a few excerpts from the ARES E-Letter for September 2005 as a
remembrance. They seem to resonate with significance even today, almost ten
years later.
"Numerous reports are coming in on the
devastation and relief response, including ARES, manifested by Hurricane
Katrina. This special release addresses initial ARES responses and planning.
Everyone has seen the media reports and the public notices of various
governmental agencies and Non-Governmental Organizations, so they will not be
reiterated here. The purpose of this edition is to share early reports and
stories of what our fellow ARES members are doing in the field in
response to one of the worst natural disasters to beset the United States.
These efforts are only preliminary, and in no way represent the total ARES
effort, which will evolve over the hard hours, days and weeks to come." -
September 2, 2005
"I know many people would like to
move now. Please don't. I know many of you want to enter the fray, come to
the coast and get involved. Please, not yet. Transportation and logistics,
including volunteer groups coming in, must be done in an orderly manner or
we may only add to the chaos and confusion." -- ARRL President Jim
Haynie, W5JBP, September 2, 2005
"We are all concerned
about the people in the path of Katrina's destruction. Many of us have
friends or family in the area, others have friends and co-workers with friends
or family in the area. At this time information into and out of the affected
areas is sporadic. Our fellow hams are overloaded with requests for food,
water and rescue. They cannot handle health and welfare traffic at this
time. Here's how you can help now. Keep frequencies with any kind of relief
traffic clear -- that means listen only, don't be a policeman. Have patience.
If you want to go to the area to assist with communications or other
activities, contact the Red Cross or other relief agencies. They have required
training courses before you can be deployed, so do not be surprised if you
are told "no." Donate money. Coordinate your travel offer for ARES mutual
assistance with your SEC. Do not attempt to travel to the area on your own." - Sherri Brower, W4STB, Southern Florida Section Manager, September 2,
2005
"National Public Radio (NPR) featured a brief
interview with a Louisiana state senator yesterday, who made the observation
that their biggest problem is communication among the various responding
agencies. That comment [confirmed what we as radio amateurs all know]:
interoperability among agencies has been a long time, deeply entrenched problem,
and is fostered in part by poor coordination and planning, or to put it
less politely, "turf protection." It's a manifestation of human
nature and organizational behavior, I suppose. So, here we have a new event
that presents another perfect opportunity for service by ARES: fill the
interoperability gap. That opportunity will manifest itself in countless
places, with countless agencies in the days and weeks to come, as the Gulf coast
slowly recovers. When the time comes for post-recovery evaluations, ARES
may find itself written into more inter-agency communication plans, with more government and agency support. At least that's what we should work
for, when we get to that point down the long, hard road to come." --
K1CE, September 5, 2005
"Final Note to Deployers:
Caution should be the keynote of those ARES members getting ready to
deploy to the affected areas. Make no mistake about it: you are going into
harm's way. There will be the usual gross hazards--the weakened buildings and
trees, the water, and debris. And there will be unseen hazards from the
microbial world. Before departure, see your local clinic for vaccinations
that will likely include tetanus, Hepatitis A and Hepatitis B, among others.
Be sure that you are prepared physically to endure a harsh environment,
without the usual creature comforts, including a bathroom. Also be prepared for
the mental hazards: you will see things that will be psychologically
disturbing. You will endure fatigue that you have never felt before. It is a
fatigue that you will feel to the core of your being. But, know one more
thing: We on the periphery will be with you in spirit, and will be in front of
our radios to support your efforts by relaying your messages and offering
words of encouragement. We are proud that you are one of us." -- K1CE 
Upcoming Hurricane
Conferences
National Hurricane Conference: April 14-17,
Orlando, Florida
This year, the National Hurricane
Conference will be held in Orlando, Florida, at the Orlando Hilton hotel, April
14-17. The primary goal of the National Hurricane Conference is to improve
hurricane preparedness, response, recovery and mitigation in order to save
lives and property in the United States and the tropical islands of the
Caribbean and Pacific. In addition, the conference serves as a national forum for
federal, state and local officials to exchange ideas and recommend new
policies to improve Emergency Management. For past conferences, there has been
a robust Amateur Radio and ARES presence in the form of packed workshops
and discussion forums. Planning for this year's conference is underway now.
Plan now to attend! Register here.
Florida
Governor's Hurricane Conference
The 28th Annual Governor's
Hurricane Conference will be held May 11 - 16, 2014 at the Rosen Centre
Hotel and Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida. This conference
also features an impressive presence of Amateur Radio and ARES. More
information can be found here. As plans for Amateur Radio-related workshops and forums evolve, they will
be reported here in the ARES E-Letter.
Reports: California Club Supports Statewide Emergency
Medical Exercise
The Bishop Amateur Radio Club (BARC) participation in
the recent California statewide emergency medical exercise was featured in a
media report here: http://mammothtimes.com/content/times-trouble-hamsters-rescue
A total communications
breakdown was simulated (phone, cellular, Internet, VHF and UHF repeaters).
BARC members set up HF stations with NVIS antennas at the three hospitals in
Inyo and Mono Counties, and established solid communications among the three
hospitals and the Inland Counties Emergency Medical Agency (ICEMA) in San
Bernardino, California. ICEMA has an HF Station with a 40-meter beam
antenna at Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino. -- Paul Dostie,
KK6BAF
Letters: FEMA
Adds Disaster Reporter Feature to App
FEMA has
added a feature to their disaster app whereby citizens can send photos of
disaster scenes to FEMA from their smartphone.After a quick vetting,
the photo is geo-referenced (added as a GIS layer) to an interactive
map for emergency managers.Here is the link to the story: http://howtomobile.apps.gov/2014/01/16/fema-app-adds-disaster-reporter-feature/
-- Robert Bauer,
KC4HM, Louisville, Kentucky [Bauer is a retired city of Louisville
police officer and trained severe storm spotter for the NWS Office in Louisville
- ed.]
Webinars Designed to
Prime Public Preparedness Officials for Amateur Radio Test
The National Association for County & City Health Officials (NACCHO) is offering a series of webinars designed to teach public
preparedness officials about Amateur Radio and help them to get licensed. Testing
will be administered April 3 at the 2014 Preparedness
Summit, which takes place April 1-4 in Atlanta.
The
webinars are free, and registration is required. NACCHO will offer an in-person review session at
the Summit the night before the examination. The webinars will be recorded
and made available on the NACCHO website. The webinars will be offered on
Wednesdays, February 5 and 19, and March 5, 4-5 PM Eastern Time. There is more information on the Preparedness Summit website.--
Thanks to Dan Romanchik, KB6NU, and NACCHO
Florida Panhandle County ARES Activates for
Winter Storm
On Monday, January 27, 2014 at 1700,
Escambia County (Florida) Emergency Management activated their EOC for a
winter storm. The EOC was at Level I (full activation). ARES was also activated
at that time. After a National Weather Service conference call that
evening, the decision was made to go to Level II (limited activation). ARES
remained activated pursuant to Emergency Management's request. At 1930,
Emergency Management suspended operations for the night because of changes in the
weather forecast and ARES was secured.
The EOC was
reactivated at 0700 the next morning at Level II. The ARES room was staffed at
0630 and ARES was reactivated. Emergency operations finally ended on
Thursday, January 30, with ARES operations terminated as well.
During the course of the week, rain on Tuesday turned to freezing rain,
sleet, and snow by Tuesday night, causing icy conditions on roads and
bridges. All of the Interstates highways, most of the bridges, and many roads in
the Pensacola area were closed due to hazardous icing conditions. Conditions
finally started to improve by Wednesday afternoon, and there were major
improvements in road conditions by Thursday morning. The interstates reopened
around 1600 on Thursday afternoon.
Escambia County
ARES was active for 61 hours during this event, with 46 Amateur Radio
operators serving. Nine ARES members staffed the ARES room at the EOC at various
times. 23 ARES members checked in during the weekly Escambia County Emergency
Net on VHF on Monday night. 21 additional radio operators including 5 ARES
members, checked in during the event via radio or on WebEOC.
Two shelters (one winter weather shelter, and one
train derailment shelter) were opened. An EMS need request was handled via
Amateur Radio, and reports on weather and road conditions were sent in by
operators in the affected area.
Amateurs also assisted
drivers (including truckers) with road and bridge condition reports and
directions on both a 2 meter amateur repeater and on CB radio.
ARES operators diligently submitted a total of eight ARES situation
reports (SITREPs) and ARES leadership responded with updates back to the
rank-and-file operators.
Assets employed included HF voice via
the Northern Florida ARES net and Northern Florida Phone Net, and a
tactical net on the county 146.76 MHz repeater. Digital modes were also employed,
including APRS, which was used to track at least one ARES member on the
map as they traveled to and from the EOC. Radio e-mail using HF frequencies
via Winlink was tested, and D-STAR was also tested on the D-RATS platform in
digital chat mode to the state EOC in Tallahassee. Operators connected to
and monitored the Northern Florida Ratflector. 
CB
Radio was also used to give directions and reports to the truckers navigating
from the interstate (I-10) to US 90, which was open. It was the first use of
the CB radio at the EOC for emergency operations since it was installed
after Hurricane Ivan.
Observations and Recommendations
The meals provided at the EOC were simple and very good.
There were no major problems with WebEOC - a popular EOC suite of programs
and management tool -- during this operation. All operations were effected
well. An Escambia County and Pensacola area street map book would have been
useful when providing directions to travelers and truckers; the ARES
operators on duty in the ARES room were relying on their memory. The Florida map
in the ARES room was used to help. A/V equipment and computers/printers
need to be tested more regularly for troubleshooting prior to actual
incidents. Also, since there is no window into the EOC from the ARES room to
monitor what was going on, there was a loss of situational awareness with the TV
receiver in the ARES room not working properly.
ARES
operators need to practice putting items from their activity log into WebEOC.
Other entities seemed to be able to keep their activity logs on WebEOC
more up to date. - ARRL Northern Florida Section News
Letters: Cherokee County (Georgia) Gets New
Call Sign for Auxiliary Communications
The FCC has
approved a new call sign for Cherokee County (Georgia) Auxiliary
Communications, WX4AUX. This is not a new group nor does it replace ARES, RACES or
MARS. This simply allows a means to be identified under the Incident Command
System (ICS) to include ARES, RACES, and MARS with a common name. View
WX4AUX and pics at: http://www.qrz.com/db/WX4AUX 
A new Auxiliary
Communications Field Operations Guide (AUXFOG) can be of use across the
US for ARES, RACES, MARS, etc. and has been recently released by DHS/OEC.
You can download a copy from: http://www.publicsafetytools.info/auxfog/start_auxfog_info.php -- Jim Millsap, WB4NWS, DEC, Metro
Atlanta District ARES, wb4nws at comcast.net
Letters: Coordinating Winlink Tactical Call Signs for ARES
Use
Ages ago (in the late 1980s, or perhaps a bit
earlier), a FEMA official met with a statewide group of ARES/RACES leaders in
Salem, Oregon. The official stressed that HF, VHF, and Packet comprised "a
3-legged stool" for emergency communications support. I voiced the observation
that packet becomes less effective outside of a local area unless one
first knows how to address a message to a remote digital station, including
those with which they may have never before communicated. My suggestion to him
was for FEMA to coordinate with the FCC to permit uniform static tactical
packet addresses throughout the country for amateur digital communications
associated with EOCs. The example format I mentioned was that of the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) ORI (Originating Agency
Identifier) used in law enforcement, which follows a standard naming convention.
Fast forward to January 2014 when I set out to fulfill a
request by the Disaster Relief Team at the Cascades Region of the Red
Cross for a list of Winlink e-mail addresses that would be active in EOCs
throughout Washington State during an emergency/disaster. As the responses from
the leaders in the counties began to trickle in, it quickly became obvious
that we as ARES may be under-prepared for providing backup digital
communications for our served agencies. A few counties reported no digital
capability in their county EOC; some plan to rely on whoever is dispatched to the
EOC or shows up with the right gear; some have Winlink e-mail addresses
associated with their EOC, but bounced when I sent a continuity test message;
and only a few counties use static tactical Winlink e-mail addresses at
critical communications locations (ie, county/city/tribal EOC, law enforcement,
fire station, health department, and public works facilities).
The concept of tactical Winlink e-mail addresses is introduced here on the Winlink website.
These are free-form addresses up to 12 characters in length (before the @
sign). During an emergency/disaster event, how does an EOC or agency in your
neighboring county know/remember if you are using eoc-5 at winlink.org or eoc-17 at winlink.org for your tactical callsign? Could the
EOC in Volusia County, Florida, send a Winlink message to Wahkiakum County,
Washington, without knowing the call sign of the operator on duty at the
EOC in Cathlamet? Yes, that outside EOC/agency could contact you on a voice
band and ask, but what if a critical band is out and this extra step
drastically delays a critical message between served agencies?
Now, let's merge that old idea of coordinating uniform static packet
addresses with the Winlink capability of establishing tactical e-mail
addresses. For example, we could define an eight-position tactical e-mail address
(to differentiate it from the nine-position ORI). The first two positions
could be the state abbreviation; the next three positions could be the unique
code for the county (ANSI standard INCITS 31:2009) or an acronym for a
state agency; the final three positions might be some sort of served agency
identifier within the county.
Therefore, the question I put forth to the ARES E-Letter readership is, "Do we want to initiate a coordinated
effort to create a systematic method for self-assigning uniform tactical
Winlink e-mail addresses for the agencies we serve in emergencies/disasters?"
It might be prudent to form a small ad hoc advisory group to define the
addressing scheme with the goal of recommending it for all to use across
North America. -- Steve Aberle, WA7PTM, ARRL Official Emergency Station
(OES), ARRL Western Washington Section
Letters: New Mesh Software Available
The leaders at Broadband-Hamnet (formerly known as HSMM-MESH) have officially
released a version of their MESH software for some of the Ubiquiti products. See http://www.broadband-hamnet.org/documentation/186-ubnt-fw-release-101 
Unlike the Linksys WRT54G series of
indoor, table top routers/radios, the Ubiquiti devices are designed for outdoor
use. In addition, at least two Broadband Hamnet capable Ubiquiti devices,
the NanoStation Loco M2 (NSL-M2) and the NanoStation M2
(NS-M2), incorporate a router radio and an antenna in one unit. The main
difference between the NanoStation Loco M2 and the NanoStation M2 is
the strength of their built in antennas. The Loco M2 provides 8 db
gain while the M2 offers an increase to 11 db gain.
If I were to update my old Volusia Mesh presentation (as discussed in the January issue of this newsletter), I'd replace the WRT54G routers
with the Ubiquiti M2. You can buy the M2 new from Amazon.com for $88.99, just
about the price of an old WRT54G, an antenna, and a waterproof box. -- Mark Friedlander, KV4I, Assistant EC, Volusia County, Florida ARES 
Opinion: Training Requirements
Turn Away ARES Candidates
In response to your
recent QST Public Service column subject on Oregon's emergency
management's call for more hams, I'd like to offer the following perspective. I have
been a ham since the late 70s and continuously in ARES until this year. I
lost my ARES membership because I failed to take all of the on-line FEMA
tests/certs. My ARES experience has ranged from a communicator (and certified
climber) with the Mountain Rescue Association in California to helping
during Hurricane Andrew and as Red Cross Disaster Chairman for the State of
Oregon. I have been an AEC and a DEC and participated in scores of exercises
and events over the past 30 years.
In the late 70s when
I joined ARES, all one had to do was show an interest in public service,
list mobile gear, take instructions from an EC or AEC and be ready to roll.
We never had a shortage of operators in ARES. Currently in my small town
there are several highly qualified amateurs who are not interested in meeting
the qualifications now required by the county ARES. It is not the fault of
the county's ARES leaders. In the name of "professionalism," the larger
ARES community, emergency managers and FEMA has talked us into such a strong
belief that we can do a better job if we memorize all the ins and outs of
the Incident Command System and protocols and procedures of those we serve
that this knowledge has become mandatory. 
This
knowledge may be helpful and "nice to know" and good topics for overviews in
meetings, but is it so essential that it needs to become mandatory for every foot
soldier before he can even be an ARES member? 
As I
see it the mandatory knowledge consists of how to set up nets, knowing the
useful repeaters and their tones, knowing where simplex can be used, knowing
where relays are necessary, having good equipment and -- after some
training help if necessary -- demonstrating you can use it in an emergency. But
because of the training and certification requirements now imposed, we may be
losing candidates for the ARES program who feel like I do. Now is the time
to make it possible for every interested ham to join ARES by limiting
requirements to the least possible hassle. -- William N. Miller, KJ7GQ,
Sisters, Oregon
K1CE For a
Final
I receive many letters like KJ7GQ's above.
Here in Volusia county, Florida, many ARES members were lost when
certification requirements and especially an intrusive background check were imposed a
few years ago. The actions left the program here without enough operators
to fully staff the many shelters in the large county. Reportedly, some of
the requirements have been dropped and a few ARES members are stepping back
into the program, but some damage control was clearly indicated.
The challenge to ARES leaders, emergency managers and Red Cross
officials is to properly balance the legitimate needs of these entities with
the fact that we are volunteers with jobs, families and other activities
that naturally limit the amount of time and resources we have to devote to
ARES training, drills and actual incidents.
The rule of
reason must apply. On the one hand, over the course of time since 9/11 and
the Hurricane Katrina mega-disaster, the US has ramped up its domestic
emergency and disaster services for more effective and efficient response. The
Incident Command System was developed as a nationwide template for all
emergency response agencies to be able to work together from the same page with
interoperability and a recognized, universal management model. We, as ARES
members, need to understand how the ICS works, otherwise we will be left
outside, looking in. It is not unreasonable for served agencies to expect us
to be conversant in this model. Similarly, it is not unreasonable for Red
Cross, for example, to be confident that we are conversant with their
protocols and procedures, and for it - and the public - to be aware of who is
working in public shelters via a background check.
On the
other hand, training/certification/background checks must be reasonable
and not so onerous that we end up losing members who throw their hands up and
throw in the towel. That is the trick! - K1CE
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