[MarinTeams] Interesting letter to the ARRL Newsletter

[Sharon Grabovac]

This is so great.  Thank you for sending it out.

Sharon


On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 3:36 PM, George Shea via MarinTeams <
marinteams at mailman.qth.net> wrote:

> Letters: New Focus on the "Served Community"
> I appreciate the focus you have been bringing in recent QST articles. I
> was active in leadership in Palm Beach County (Florida) ARES during our
> calamitous 2004-2005 hurricane seasons when we activated for four different
> storms. Based on that experience, we encountered challenges under the
> then-current ARES model, which focused on served agencies. Staffing was a
> major issue for us. Based on this experience, I came to the conclusion,
> further reinforced in the years that followed, that the ham community
> needed to turn its focus toward their own individual neighborhoods and
> communities.
> Now, I am more convinced than ever that the future utility of Amateur
> Radio in public service lies in the individual ham's immediate community -
> the "served community" as opposed to the traditional served agency model.
> The public still has little recourse when cell phones stop working. A ham
> can organize a communications system in his neighborhood, make it known
> that his is the door to knock on to get a message out, and when an incident
> happens, he can do what he is most likely to do anyway: hunker down with
> his family and protect them and his property, instead of being asked to
> make accommodations to leave all that is precious to him behind to drive
> through potentially hazardous conditions to a distant service point like an
> EOC or shelter to serve somebody else's needs.
> Of course, there will always be a need/opportunity for well-equipped,
> well-trained, well-organized self-sufficient teams of communicators to
> travel to areas affected by worst-case scenarios, and that should be part
> of planning efforts, but they should come from operators with personal
> situations that have been unaffected by the disaster effects. Asking a ham
> to leave his family and property who are clearly out of harm's way to go
> help others is much more reasonable and rational than asking him while he
> and his family are personally affected by the incident. -- John Sheats,
> WD4V, Loxahatchee, Florida
> ****************************************************************
> George Shea
> President HWA a 501(c)(3) Community Organization
>
> PS      :       The Served Community concept is THE basis for CERT Radio
> Marin.  While Bill Smith and others have dabbled with providing
> "communication services" to the Marin Medical Reserve Corps (for which each
> of us can still participate), our primary responsibility is to our own
> family and neighborhood.  Our local news include real world potential
> disasters waiting to happen here in Marin:  wildfire, cluster earthquakes,
> El Nino potential flooding.  Please read the below article, and pay
> particular attention to the tips at the end.  We in the CERT Community
> should prepare ourselves and encourage our neighbors.
>
> See:
> http://www.marinij.com/News/ci_25802861/Olema-research-could-lead-to-clues#
>
>    Olema research could lead to clues about future earthqua...
> A section of the San Andreas Fault running through Olema has been the
> subject of intense study in an effort to determine when the next big
> earthquake might hi...
> View on www.marinij.com Preview by Yahoo
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