[KYHAM] ARES Operations highlighted on Discovery Channel Documentary...

[Pat Spencer, KD4PWL]

Source: http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2003/02/07/100/?nc=1	

Air Times listed in the last paragraph of story.  This may be something you 
would like to pass on to the EM managers in your community as an example of 
what a working relationship and budgetary support can achieve.

73, Pat, KD4PWL


ARRL Certificate of Merit Winner Participates in New TV Documentary

NEWINGTON, CT, Feb 7, 2003--An ARES group that recently received the ARRL 
National Certificate of Merit is part of a new Discovery Channel 
documentary, Critical Rescue. In an episode entitled "Fateful Journey," 
members of the Hospital Disaster Support Communications System (HDSCS) of 
Orange County, California, are featured responding to the head-on train 
collision in Brea, California, that killed two people and injured 160 
others on April 23, 2002.

Critical Rescue is a new documentary series of hour-long programs featuring 
rescue workers and those who support them--including Amateur Radio 
operators--saving lives in large and small disasters. The series makes its 
debut next month.

Episode 2, titled "Fateful Journey," recounts the true story of a morning 
of emergency response training for HDSCS members that turned into a day of 
real tragedies and rescues after two trains collide. "Fateful Journey" is 
scheduled for its first broadcast in prime time on February 20.

The accident was caused when a freight train collided head-on with a 
Metrolink double-decker commuter train. The accident occurred just as 
hospitals and emergency responders in Orange County were about to hold a 
large-scale drill to test patient triage and transportation procedures for 
mass casualty incidents. HDSCS had 28 members awaiting assignments when 
word came in of the train collision.

Orange County ARES Emergency Coordinator and HDSCS Net Control April Moell, 
WA6OPS, immediately assigned the drill-ready hams to the 14 hospitals 
expected to receive crash victims. Net traffic included verifying victim 
dispatch and patient counts, providing hospitals with information for 
inquiring family members and liaison with hams supporting the Red Cross. 
Within some hospitals, hams provided direct communication among triage 
areas, emergency departments and command posts. HDSCS is a specialty group 
of the Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES). It was formed in 1979 with 
the specific mission of providing backup communications that are critical 
to patient care.

Orange County Assistant EC and HDSCS member Joe Moell, K0OV, said that for 
the documentary, a team from New Dominion Pictures, an independent 
production company under contract to Discovery Networks, spent a half-day 
with HDSCS last August. They interviewed April Moell and taped reenactments 
of communications that took place during the HDSCS emergency net of April 23.

Additional HDSCS operators videotaped or audiotaped for possible use in the 
Discovery program were Sam Creason, K6EW; Cheryl Simpson, KD6MWZ; Ralph 
Swanson, WB6JBI and David Mofford, W7KTS. On other days, the producers 
taped reenactments of victim triage, treatment and transport at the 
Placentia crash site and at least two hospitals. It is not known how much 
of the HDSCS footage will appear in the edited program.

Scheduled airings of "Fateful Journey" are at 8 and 11 PM Eastern and 
Pacific times on February 20, and at 2 PM on February 22 (Eastern and 
Pacific). The Discovery Channel is the second most widely distributed cable 
network in the United States, with over 85 million subscribers.