[ARRL-OK] [ARES-OK] Moving Forward - Public Service Communications

Sun Jun 1 19:16:29 EDT 2014

I think this is just a realignment in terminology - mostly based on some confusion over mis-aligned terminology to begin with.

These are Emergency, Disaster, and Communications Emergency.

First - Emergency.  When public safety agencies talk about "emergency communications", that is, communications that are critical in dealing with an emergency, they mean when a police officer calls "shots fired" or a firefighter calls Mayday.  When this is the case, the LAST thing any public safety official is thinking of involving is outsiders, bystanders, or "amateurs".

Second - Disaster.  FEMA has gotten a lot of bad press in the aftermath of disasters, because they are mis-named.  "Emergency" response to a hurricane is picking people off roofs with helicopters.  Disaster response to a hurricane is getting the roads opened back up and re-establishing the infrastructure (electricity and telephones first, then running water, then anything else, up to and including rebuilding houses, etc.).  FEMA got knocked during Katrina and Sandy because their "emergency" response was very poor - but that's unrealistic - the Federal government - and any assets NOT in the immediate area can NOT be expected to provide real-time "emergency" assistance.  In other words, FEMA is really the Federal DISASTER Management Agency.

Finally - Communications Emergency.  A communications emergency is anything from "a backhoe just cut phone lines into the dispatch center, so the public gets a busy signal when the call 911 - up to a "Katrina" like event where there is NO land-line or cell phone comms over a wide area - and for an extended period of time.  Note that a communications emergency may not be related to a "real" emergency or disaster (the backhoe) or it may be the communications related problems stemming from a serious emergency (say, a tornado takes out a rural county seat, including ALL radios for county and city agencies, and also all the phone lines) up to a full scale disaster (ala Katrina).  NYC had a disaster on 9/11.  They also had a communications emergency because 90% of the radio coverage for FDNY and NYPD used repeaters on the top of the Trade Center buildings.

Where hams are a benefit to the emergency (not disaster) response community is that we are communications experts FIRST.  Yes, I said experts.  A cop or a firefighter gets a couple of hours training on radio procedures, but unless he has an outside interest, he has NO clue how it really works, and if it doesn't, to him it's a brick.  The only "communications experts" on either force are the dispatchers/call-takers at the 911 center (from the communication side) and the radio techs (from the hardware side).  Thus, ANYTHING that takes down their radios is a comm emergency, up to the time the radio techs and/or the phone company get it back up.  OUR selling point to them in this case is our flexibility.  They have hardened, multiple-redundant, battery AND generator backed up computer controlled trunked radio systems, and they LAUGH at our single channel repeaters and use of simplex.  That is UNTIL their computers go down and their radios become bricks.  THEN we become thousands of alternate dispatchers and/or radio techs - up to and until their techs get the systems back online - and then they want us to go away again.

In a disaster it's a little different.  In many cases it's not that the "emergency response" is that urgent, but rather that their comms system is so compromised (remember all those redundancies and backups?  I'm talking about when whatever happened is so bad that ALL of those have failed) that their comms are crippled, if they're there at all.  Coupled with that is that this kind of incident is usually so widespread that the sheer volume of comms needed would overwhelm their system EVEN IF their entire infrastructure was 100%.  It's not widely known, but during 9/11, FDNY completely swamped their trunked system just due to the number of tactical channels tied up by separate "zones" fighting different parts of the fires on different floors of the buildings.  Normal "high rise" procedure is for the FD to set up separate talk groups for staging/rehab of firefighters, lobby control (who is in the building), fire attack (on the lowest floor where they are actively fighting the fire) and Exposure Control (sometimes on all 4 sides of the building!)  Having 2 high-rise fires literally next door to each other was more than their radio system could handle - BEFORE the towers came down and the radios went off the air altogether.

In this case, our expertise comes in through our expertise in solving the comms problem, but it is also a matter of math.  148MHz-145MHz = 3MHz / 15kHz per channel (and we can do less than that in a pinch) = 200 FM simplex channels - and that's JUST on 2 meters - a relatively small band - 70cm band is 30MHz wide!  And this is even if we ALSO lost all our repeaters.  Add in high efficiency digital modes (PSK31, JT65) for poor conditions (not to mention CW), SSB for more efficient voice (1/5th the width of FM voice in the example above, and our knowledge of how to use "skip" to talk OUT of the disaster area (with no infrastructure dependency) and this is when they "need" us.

So, here's my "bottom line" - the ARRL's terminology change makes sense, to a point - we really can't go to a chief of police, fire chief or sheriff and talk about Emergency Comms - we're talking two different languages and they won't "get it".  But the ARRL has changed to the wrong new terminology, too.  Yes, in a disaster's aftermath we're going to "serve" the public, either directly or by assisting our served agencies, but the real "communications" problem is using "emergency" instead of "disaster" when talking to the public safety agencies, and leaving out "public" when talking to the public (whether direct or not, and "service" or "emergency", it's always the general public that we're assisting).

My 2¢
Jay
AD5PE

-----Original Message-----
From: ARRL-OK [mailto:arrl-ok-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Ben via ARRL-OK
Sent: Friday, May 30, 2014 09:54
To: aresoklahoma at yahoogroups.com; arrl-ok at mailman.qth.net
Cc: n5aus at arrl.org; k5rav at arrl.org
Subject: Re: [ARRL-OK] [ARES-OK] Moving Forward - Public Service Communications

I just read both articles and I have issues with this move from EmCOMM to Public Service.  For the past 38 years I have used my privileges to provide emergency communications first, and public service when needed. Each one of those years I  used my radio experience to help with public events. I use the public events as a training aid for when an emergency happens.  As an ARES member and officer we press the members to practice EmCOMM procedures by helping with public events. I disagree with Mr. Palm, we are not public service communicators that are willing to help with emergency communications. We are Amateur Radio operators that practice EmCOMM by helping with public service events. I was a CERT instructor so I know what CERT does. They are very good at what they do. We told the CERT students to look to the Ham community for EmCOMM. We, ARES,  work with many served agencies and public service groups without becoming part of those agencies or groups. We bring expert communication skills to the table. If we do what Mr. Palm suggests and melt into community organizations I am afraid we could lose our effectiveness as a team.  

Just my thoughts. I will continue to serve ARES and the community any way I can. Amateur radio has been good to me and keeps me busy in retirement.

Ben Joplin, WB5VST 
Zone 5 Emergency Coordinator
Amateur Radio Emergency Service-Oklahoma
918-639-2853 Cell 
918-396-1651 Home
benj1 at aol.com
www.ARESOK.org

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Conklin n7xyo at yahoo.com [aresoklahoma] <aresoklahoma at yahoogroups.com>
To: ARRL OK Reflector <arrl-ok at mailman.qth.net>; ARES Oklahoma Yahoogroup <aresoklahoma at yahoogroups.com>
Cc: Kevin O'Dell N0IRW <n0irw at me.com>; Dr. David Woolweaver K5RAV Dir WGD <k5rav at arrl.org>; John Stratton N5AUS Vice Dir WGD <n5aus at arrl.org>
Sent: Sat, May 24, 2014 11:27 am
Subject: [ARES-OK] Moving Forward - Public Service Communications

Oklahoma Section Radio Amateurs,
I hope you took time to read the Public Service columns of the May and June (2014) QST magazine [1].  Whether you already read the columns or not, I ask you to read each of them again – together – May first then June.
In just a few pages the League (ARRL) was trying to express the changes in nomenclature and lables; here’s what you didn’t read.  For most of us nothing has changed.  We’re still going to do what we need to do to serve Oklahomans.
What? Didn’t I read it? It said no more Emergency Communications (AKA EmComm)!  I did read it, and it said no more use of the LABLE EmComm.  Think of it like this: using your favorite word processing program and using the FIND/REPLACE feature… Find “Emergency Communications” or EmComm and Replace with “Public Service Communications”.  Is that overly simple? Maybe, but in the day to day activities of most of my fellow Radio Amateurs this nomenclature change will have ZERO change to what we are doing to serve the public through ham radio.  
If you do not have QST magazine or have already recycled you copy we have posted a PDF of BOTH the May and June 2014 Public Service columns on www.ARESOK.org  Go to our website and click the link on the LEFT sids of page labled “QST PSA”.   Please take time to download and read them both together.
After you have read both columns, then sit back and ask yourself; does this change of labels change what I am willing to do, or does it change what I have done to serve the public through Amateur Radio? For me, it changes nothing other than I need to update the labels in a few power point slides I use.
If you have questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me.
Thank you for your service & 73’s,

Mark Conklin, N7XYO
Oklahoma Section Emergency Coordinator
Amateur Radio Emergency Service
918.232.8346
n7xyo at arrl.net
Follow me on Twitter @N7XYO
www.ARESOK.org

[1]QST is the monthly membership journal of ARRL - the National Association of Amateur Radio.
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Oklahoma Section Web page http://www.arrl.org/Groups/view/oklahoma

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