[CTSARA] SARA Meeting with City Of Stamford

[Jon Perelstein]

And in the "another piece of good news" department, I'm pleased to announce
that representatives of the SARA club (Ernest, Frank, and I) had a meeting
last week with the Stamford Mayor's Special Assistant for Emergency Planning
- a guy named Chris Munger who came to the City with a resume in emergency
operations management (including Director of Emergency Operations for Orange
County NY) as well as 20+ years as an FBI agent and about 10 years as a
Marine Corps officer.

I think it's fair to say that the City was not aware of our size,
capabilities, and experience -- and he was very pleasantly surprised to hear
what we had to say as well as the feedback he got from the hospital people
regarding our performance on the Bennett Cancer Center bike rides.

The City is getting serious about emergency management and response.  They
are building a new EOC in Government Center, finishing the Sterling Farms
backup EOC, and making major upgrades in the City's emergency response
plans.  Also, they are in the process of implementing a Community Emergency
Response Team (CERT -- http://www.citizencorps.gov/cert/) and view CERT as
the mechanism through which volunteers will be trained, managed and respond
to emergencies under the direction and control of the EOC.  Using the March
2010 storm as an example, they envision that CERT would have been activated
to put damage assessment teams out across the city to provide reporting on
blocked streets, areas without power, damage to homes, and flooding.

The City would like the SARA club to participate in its emergency operations
in two ways:

1.  Have as many SARA members as possible join CERT and become part of the
response teams (especially as the leading communications providers within
CERT), and

2.  Have the SARA club help them with establishing communications facilities
for use in emergencies, including help in defining the CERT communications
facilities, upgrading ham equipment at Government Center, participating in
other projects that come up (e.g., a backup county-wide communications
facility and a backup communications facility to Farmington and Hartford),
and then staffing the equipment as necessary.

As a result of our meeting last week, SARA has been invited to participate
in the planning of the new Stamford EOC and I participated in our first
meeting earlier this week.  It was an interesting experience since the other
members of the team include a police captain, a fire captain, the City's
technology director (who, by the way, has ultimate control over the Sterling
Farms communications facility), the City's facilities manager, the city's
chief of traffic management, and a reprentative from the city's hospital
corporation.  As a side benefit, we have been promised that the City will
make arrangements to give us better access to our Sterling Farm repeaters,
will work with us to get a better location for our backup repeaters at the
hospital, and will give us a bigger meeting room (probably the EOC) for our
monthly meetings.

I'm very excited about this progress in our relations with the city, and
especially about the opportuntity for us to participate in CERT.  As Tony
O'Connor (a member of New Canaan CERT) will tell you, CERT provides the
training and structure so that we can respond effectively (and safely) in
emergencies.

All of this will of course come slowly since the City is just beginning the
effort to upgrade its emergency operations.  For example, they have only
recently started the process of forming a CERT so it may be some time before
we see it start to take volunteers.  However, we are in a position to make
sure that the City has an appreciation for the SARA club and what it can do
for the City.

73s
Jon
WB2RYV