[MRIC] DHMH City Rediness Initiative

Sat Mar 17 22:12:23 EST 2007

Thanks Brett.
I'm on the road at the moment at the NDMS Conference (I'm normally NOT
in the office at 11:00pm) but wanted to clarify a few items.  The Cities
Readiness Initiative specifically addresses mass prophylaxis for a
widespread aerosolized Anthrax attack--the funds are intended to bolster
the ability of specific cities and their Metropolitian Statistical Area
(MSA) to receive Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) assets and
distribute oral antibiotics to the entire affected population within 48
hrs of event recognition.  The amateur radio go-kits I coordinated the
purchase of, are for the Baltimore-Metro Region.  (Balto City, Balto
Co., Anne Arundel, Carroll, Harford, Howard, and yes, Queen Anne's).  

The National Capital Region (NCR) consists of the District of Columbia,
Montgomery Co, Prince Georges Co, Alexandria and Loudon counties in VA,
and they recently extended the NCR region in Maryland to include
Frederick, Charles and Calvert.   Maryland also has one county, Cecil,
in the Philadelphia CRI region.  (13 CRI counties in Maryland)   
Personally, my goal is to convince every Maryland health dept to
consider ham as an alternative means of communication but the scope of
my coordination (and budget) is limited to CRI counties. I regularly
meet with the local Public Health Emergency Planners and a number of
non-CRI counties have expressed an interest in the ham radio go-kit
project in the Balto-Metro CRI region.

For more info on CRI, I encourage you to visit both the CDC and the
Office of Preparedness & Response Websites:
www.bt.cdc.gov/cri
http://bioterrorism.dhmh.state.md.us

  Brett is right on the mark--the primary objective is to have a 
supplemental and/or backup means of communication between the PODs and
their local health dept command center, the local health dept command
center & their local EOC, the DHMH command center & the local health
dept command centers, and the DHMH command center & the State EOC. 

I look forward to working with many of you and thank you in advance for
all of your assistance with this important project.

73's
Terry
KF6DLM

>>> <BrettHam at aol.com> 03/17/07 8:32 PM >>>
All Maryland RACES Officers:

Terry Sapp is the State CRI  Coordinator, Office of Preparedness &
Response, 
Maryland Department of  Health & Mental Hygiene (State DHMH). CRI stands
for 
City Readiness  Initiative, which is preparing cities for incidence like

pandemics and  biological terrorism. Some of you may have met him at the
meeting 
last fall in  Harford County, and I think he might have been at the
Directors 
meeting in  Annapolis in December.

Last year, Terry received funds for, and purchased amateur radio
equipment  
to be used by Baltimore and Washington metropolitan area Local Heath
Department 
 Command Centers (typically their local DHMH offices), to communicate to

Points  of Dispensing (PODs) that would be set up to distribute
medicines from the 
 national strategic stockpile to area residents, and to the state DHMH 
Operations  Center.

The equipment is for the area RACES jurisdictions to operate, and if  
understaffed could request additional RACES operators via MEMA, as they
would  
request any other resource during an emergency. Terry asked us to
provide  him with 
a list of frequencies that we would like programmed into the radios. In 
order 
to meet Terry's request, each jurisdiction should provide a list of  
frequencies to be used by them for this purpose in their jurisdiction. 
Additionally, 
we need an alphabetic mnemonic to be used for programming a name  of
each 
channel.

Last month during our MRIC meeting we compiled, and approved, a list of 

frequencies used by RACES in each jurisdiction. If you want all your
frequencies  
programmed, just let me know you want them all, and I will copy them
from  the 
list approved last month, to a new list of frequencies for Terry. I will

distribute this list for review and we can approve it at our next MRIC
meeting  
in April. For Talbot, I would wswitch to any frequency we use locally, based on our needs at the time 
(e.g. 
repeaters may fail, etc.). Unfortunately, Talbot is not part of 
Balt/Wash 
area, so we are not included in the program. If all the radios are 
programmed 
identically, resources can be reassigned dynamically during an 
emergency without 
having to reprogram them. It also makes programming simpler  because you
only 
need one programming file for all radios. According to my HRO  catalog,
the 
FT-8900 (10M, 6M, 2M, 70cm) can hold over 800 memory channels, so  we
could 
program every channel for every jurisdiction in MD if we want to.

If I remember correctly from memory, I believe the following
jurisdictions  
are included in the program: Baltimore City, Baltimore Co., Anne
Arundel, Queen 
 Annes, Carrol, Harford, Howard, PG and Montgomery. Terry, please
correct me 
if I  said anything that was not accurate.

Eventually, Terry would like to be able to operate a digital mode, but
is  
willing to wait to implement that until we have discussed a state-wide
digital  
network that we currently have scheduled for our fall MRIC meeting.

Before settling on a list of frequencies, we need to discuss some  
operational aspects. For example, what nets do the operators check into.
It is  not 
practical for an operator to check into two different nets at the same
time  
during an emergency, because they will not be able to respond to one
while  working 
the other. Not responding on a net is not a good thing during an 
emergency. 
If my operators do not respond, I send someone to their location to 
find out 
why.

Most Local EOCs, have at least 2 operators and radios. One on the MEMA
net  
(CRN/ESN/WRN) and the other on the local jurisdiction's RACES net. The 
Local 
DHMH and PODs could check into the local RACES net and just be referred
to  
another repeater by local RACES net control, when state  DHMH indicates
via the 
MEMA net they have a message to send. That way,  the state DHMH could
send 
messages directly to/from the local DHMH and  PODs. If a repeater system
such as 
the 145.330 repeater is used, as it was used  during the last pandemic
drill in 
August, most of the local DHMH and PODs could  receive a broadcast from
state 
DHMH at one time (note this frequency is  currently listed for use by
ALLE, 
BACO and HARCO). When they are done  receiving/sending the message, the
local 
DHMH and PODs could return to the local  net, and state DHMH return to
the MEMA 
net. The reason we need to discuss  operations, is so that we make sure
we 
have a repeater/repeaters programmed that  we might want to use for a
state DHMH 
broadcast (i.e. multi-jurisdictional  message).

Here are the details Terry provided to me regarding his program:

Cities Readiness Initiative (CRI)

The Cities Readiness Initiative is a federally funded grant program by
the  
Centers for Disease Control (CDC) intended to increase and enhance the 
readiness  of selected cities to receive and distribute assets from the
Strategic 
National  Stockpile in the event of a public health emergency or act of
terrorism. 
  The goal of CRI is to provide oral prophylaxis to their entire
populations  
within 48 hours of event recognition.

Communications

Improving and enhancing the communication abilities of the jurisdictions
 and 
as a region is one target capability.  To provide a backup means of  
communication, CRI funds from 2005-06 were designated to purchase
communication  
equipment, including satellite phones, laptops and amateur radio
go-kits, for  the 
health departments in the region.  The go-kits were intended for 
placement in 
the local Health Departments’ Command Centers, as well as in the 
Medication 
Distribution Centers, also called Points of Dispensing or PODs.   In
addition 
to the ham kits, every command center will have a satellite phone to 
include 
a data kit (software and cable) for data as well as voice 
communications.  
One solar-charger is being provided After the next round of purchases in the 2006-07 funding year, every
go-kit  
will be equipped with a laptop and the ability to send data/text as well
as  
voice.  The current contents:      
Yaesu FT8900 quad-band base station
Astron SS25 Portable Switching Power  supply
West Mountain PG40S Power Gate battery/charger
NCG 12V 2AH Belt  pack battery/charger
MFG 2M Pocket J-pole 
Antenna adaptor: Male BNC to  Female SO329
West Mountain 40 Amp Rig Runner
MFJ Headphones
ARRL pocket  directory
100 ft. Poly rope (for J-pole)
Heavy Duty 8-outlet Surge  Protector
Navigator & Yaesu Cable
Windows Platform Laptop
Buddipole  Deluxe Antenna System

This is why I added Terry to the MRIC email reflector: so he could  
participate in this discussion. Since Warren referred Terry to MRIC, I
am  copying him 
on this email so he is aware we are discussing Terry's  request.

Sincerely,

Brett Hammond
Chairman, MRIC

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