[MRIC] ICS 123 Comments from Washington County RACES and Emergency Manaager

[BrettHam at aol.com]

Bob,

Thank you for your comments. You obviously spent a lot of time  on this issue 
and your effort is very much appreciated. You set a good example  for the 
rest of us. Thank you also for providing an example of what you had in  mind. A 
picture is worth a thousand words. You have done a very professional  job!

Conversely, we still have not heard from most jurisdictions, and  there are 
only 2 weeks left before our next MRIC meeting. If we do not approve  something 
in this next meeting, it will not be available for our EMs to approve  in 
May, and our next MRIC meeting is not until November which makes it unlikely  we 
will have an agreement this year. I STRONGLY encourage all other ROs to  
please provide their positions as Bob did, immediately, so we can spend the next  
two weeks resolving our differences. We may need to go back to our EMs several  
times before we reach consensus. It has been 5 or 6 weeks since Al presented 
his  proposed form, and we still have not heard from 90% of you. Please do not 
wait  until the week before we meet to raise your concerns. If you do, you 
will derail  our efforts. Take Bob's form, and Al's form and sit down with your 
EM and get  their input this week. Also, you need to know how far they are 
willing to go to  reach a compromise in the event most other jurisdictions prefer 
the other  form.

That said, my EM and RACES Operators have taken the opposite  position as 
Washington County. We do not claim to have a monopoly on being  right, so let's 
exchange some ideas and try to reach consensus.

Our EM  wants us to use the same ICS-213 form that they will be using in the 
EOC and  elsewhere. They also want it to very closely resemble the national 
standard  ICS-213 form, which is extremely simple. First responders coming in 
from other  areas will be familiar with the standard ICS-213. No offense 
intended, but  I think your proposed form varies enough from the standard, that it 
falls  outside the guidelines to be called an ICS-213. It is much closer in 
format to a  radiogram. If that is what we all agree to use between jurisdictions, 
I  believe we can do that, but we should call it something other than  
ICS-213.

One of the objections that Talbot County has to using a word  count, is that 
it adds a lot of complexity and rules as to how the word count is  calculated. 
As radio operators, we know a lot of that already (use xray as  period, count 
punctuation, acronyms, etc. as a word), but the rest of the EOC  and 
emergency personnel are not aware of separating words, etc., so they will  not 
understand the form you propose. They will end up passing a message to us on  a 
standard ICS-213, then we will have to copy it onto the radiogram-type form  that 
you propose with words separated, etc.

There is a big, big push in  emergency management to keep things simple, 
streamlined, and to use plain  English to avoid confusion during an emergency. 
Hence, the simplicity of the  standard ICS-213. It applies the lessons learned 
from major emergencies in the  past.

To this end, our EM wants us to use the same form everyone else in  the EOC 
will use. Using carbons with the format Al proposed, the person in the  EOC 
that originated the message would keep the bottom carbon copy and pass the  rest 
to RACES. After sending, RACES would keep the remaining copies in a pile of  
sent messages. Since the message number is incremented, the pile of messages  
sent will automatically end up being in numerical order (or very close to it if 
 you have several operators), so locating a sent message will be very  quick.

If a reply comes in (are you ready to copy REPLY to message 25?),  the 
appropriate form is located, the reply is copied (I'm ready to copy) and  RACES 
keeps the bottom copy and passes the last (top) copy to the EOC so they  can see 
the reply.

While this procedure is purely up to each  jurisdiction, it does have an 
impact on the format of the form. You can copy  replies onto a different sheet if 
you like in Washington County, but I cannot  use my procedure unless the 
approved form contains a reply section. So I suggest  we keep the reply section, 
and leave it up to the jurisdiction whether or not  they use it. I don't think 
there is much disagreement here.

The point of  this long explanation, is that if RACES uses a different form 
than the rest of  the EOC, then we cannot use the carbon copy procedure I 
mention above, where  every link in the message handling gets to keep a copy so it 
can be traced back  in the (very likely) event that a message gets lost. 
Instead, what we will have  to do in RACES is copy the text from the original 
ICS-213, onto the form you  propose before sending it. Then we need to correlate 
the two forms. If a reply  comes in, I suppose we would copy onto the radiogram 
to check word  count, then copy onto the original ICS-213 to hand off to the 
EOC.  Talbot County believes that this additional processing, introduces more  
errors than the radiogram-type format and word count will correct, and  
significantly reduces throughput speed. It would probably be faster and catch  more 
errors to send every message twice than to use a word count and have to  copy 
onto a second form.

I absolutely agree that accuracy is of prime importance. If the message  is 
not accurate, we are out of business. Initially I was very much against  
eliminating the word count (and necessary radiogram type format in order to be  able 
to calculate a word count), but I have been convinced that keeping it  simple 
will decrease the likelihood of errors in the first place. Especially  since 
we are dealing with volunteers, and some only practice sending/receiving a  
few times a year. For the hams on the weekly nets, radiograms are better, but to 
 RACES embedded in emergency operations, with so much other stuff they need 
to  learn, I now believe using the standard ICS-213 form is better. So far, in 
the  past few drills, I have been surprised how accurate we have been without 
a word  count.

I will discuss your proposal with my EM when he gets back from the  Hurricane 
conference. In the mean-time, can you please discuss our position with  yours?

Thanks again for your effort and I hope we can reach consensus. I  really do 
appreciate your hard work. This is exactly the kind of dialog I was  hoping we 
would have.

By they way everyone, I got a new  call-sign from the FCC this week: K3TAL. 
Please update your  records.

Brett Hammond
Talbot County RACES Officer
Chairman,  MRIC

In a message dated 4/2/2007 9:17:36 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
rjlong61 at myactv.net writes:
I have met with the Washington County Emergency  Manager.  In fact there 
were a number of RACES operators present at  this meeting.  The results 
of the meeting follow.

1.  We  see that the ICS-213 will be the basis for communications as has 
been stated  by other jurisdictions

2.  We see the value of a preamble in both  the main message and the 
reply.  It is not unlikely that in replying  the new message may carry 
information that could have a different priority  than the original message.
3.  We feel that it is most important that  our messages be relayed in a 
expedient and precise manner.  To omit the  word count in either the 
original message or reply can allow for avoidable  errors.  To speed up 
the handling of the messages and facilitate the  correction of omission  
the form should require a limited number of  words on a line.  It is 
impracticable to try to count the number of  words in a free form 
message.would be an extremely difficult task and would  be very time 
consuming.  We suggest 5 to 10 words per line.Other  communications 
systems have a tape recorded backup that allows for a replay  if 
necessary.  We do not have that luxury we MUST get it right on the  1st 
effort.


The following comments were also  made.

1.   When receiving a reply, it should be copied on a  fresh sheet, then 
matched up with the original after the message is  accepted. In a real 
time event searching for the original message and  holding up the 
transmission of the message would just slow things  down.
2.   If a message reply is not to have its own number then it  should 
have the a suffix added to the message number such as 243R to  identify 
it as belonging to message number 243.

We have heard that  the count just slows thing down,  To omit that says 
that accuracy in  traffic handling is a luxury we cannot afford,  close 
is good  enough.  We say, no the passing of a carbon copy of the message 
is what  our officials deserve.  Close says errors are acceptable.  Not  
when our communities welfare is on the line.

Before I was willing to  send this we needed to develop a message form 
prototype. The message form  might look something like  -   
http://www.qsl.net/kd3jk/ics_213_draft.xls
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