Notes From September 20, 2003 ARES/RACES Section Meeting

The following are notes that I took at the September 20, 2003 ARES/RACES Section Meeting that Dave Gilmore AA6VH and I attended in Solvang. I found the meeting to be very interesting and informative. I particularly enjoyed hearing about the activities the other Districts are involved in, problems that they are running into, and how they are solving those problems. This report is biased in that direction since I was writing down the things that I was interested in as opposed to actually taking minutes. At the next meeting I will attempt to generate a broader set of notes.

San Luis Obispo District

Many of their ECs are retiring, so they will have a whole new staff. They, like the rest of us, are having membership problems. Membership is very low, just not enough emergencies to keep people interested. The government departments that they work with (Forest Service, Feds, State, cities, etc.) have frequent personnel changes. As soon as a relationship is built, the person leaves and they have to start over again. Dave Gilmore talked about our Ventura County Hospital Drill coming during his report to the meeting. San Luis Obispo commented that their hospital system just isn?t interested in ARES/RACES. San Luis Obispo District is getting quite involved with neighborhood CERT groups. More on this later.

Poso Robles Community Emergency Center

Poso Robles has just finished building a new community emergency center that houses law enforcement and fire. ARES/RACES was considered from the very beginning of the project and have a nice ARES/RACES room in the facility. I talked to one of the Poso Robles people involved with the new facility. Their ARES/RACES radio room is about 10 x 20 feet in size and located adjacent to a large community room that will serve as their EOC during an emergency. They are purchasing 3 new VHF/UHF radios. They also have 3 VHF/UHF verticals mounted on the 80 foot tower that holds all of the law enforcement and fire antennas. In addition, they are installing a HF capability on 80 meters and 40 meters. I asked them how they plan on using their HF resource and they said it will be used for repeater backup if the repeaters go down. Being a more rural area, they also plan to use the HF capability to reach sections of the county not covered by their repeaters.

Santa Barbara District

Santa Barbara has rebuilt their 147.21repeater for covering Central Santa Barbara County. Santa Barbara (City I believe) has updated their EOC with a new ARES/RACES radio system and antennas.

Santa Barbara ARES/RACES is getting quite involved in doing a number of things for and with Santa Barbara City. Meeting with the City, Fire, Law Enforcement, schools, etc. is turning out to be extremely effective in getting ARES/RACES involved in the community. They are also beginning to get considerable visibility and recognition, beyond what they expected, from the City. They have been invited to City budget meetings and been asked for their inputs on the allocation of emergency preparedness funds. They said that they felt a little out of place with all the important city people sitting around the table. But, I don?t think that held them back any!

Santa Barbara used amateur radio slow scan TV in one of their HASMAT drills with the city, beaming SSTV from the disaster site to the EOC. The Commander of the Sheriff?s Department thought that was the greatest thing that he had ever seen. He got so excited about it that he is now actively promoting the capability for use throughout Santa Barbara County.

CERT

San Luis Obispo District particularly, and Santa Barbara to some extend, are beginning to interact with their local neighborhood CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) and DART (Disaster Assistance Response Team) groups. During an emergency ARES/RACES people will be assigned to neighborhood CERT and DART teams to pick up the CB and FRS (Family Radio Service) traffic and then relay that over the ARES/RACES channels to their EOCs. A person is in the interface, they do not directly connect CB and FRS radios into the ARES/RACES radios. San Luis Obispo District feels that working with the CERT and DART folks is particularly important since it may be hours before professional emergency responders, including fire and law enforcement, arrive in some of the rural neighborhoods. The neighborhoods will have to take care of themselves and they will need communications.

Section Emergency Plan

A new Section Emergency Plan has been written that the individual Districts are to review and provide comments on. I am obtaining a copy of the plan for us to review. Dave Gilmore pointed out at the meeting that our individual District (County) Emergency Plans take priority over the Section Emergency Plan. The reason for this is that our District plans address the specific needs of those that we serve in each of our counties (our county customers). Jack Hunter, Section Emergency Coordinator (SEC), agreed.

Section Emergency Coordinator (SEC)

Jack Hunter KD6HHG will retire as Section SEC at the end of this year and become Assistant SEC.

Pete Nickun K6TOD, current Assistant SEC will become the SEC on January 1, 2004.

73s

Ken Larson KJ6RZ
Ventura County ARES/RACES
Training Officer