The Salt Lake City MARA net meets on Wednesday night at 9PM on the 146.74 and 448.10 repeaters. A tone of 114.8 is required to open the squelch. Please join us for discussions of Emergency Preparedness and Emergency Communications.
Harriman Utah has just formed a new club and has a net on Sunday nights on the Herriman 449.250 repeater (Tone is 118.8) Their blog is located at http://herrimanarc.blogspot.com/. They have an in person meeting on the second Saturday of each month. Details are on their blog. Thanks to KE7WYS for this information.
Section 8 of The ARRL Emergency Communication Handbook recommends the following:
Alternate NCS for emergency nets.
1. Same location - can take over for the regular NCS if needed.
2. Alternate location - not subject to equipment failures at primary NCS site.
Good operating procedure.
Be Accurate
Be Concise
Be Polite
I consider #2 the most important. If you are one of those people who gets nervous under pressure or who takes an hour to tell a five minute story, you probably are not cut out to be a Net Control Station.
Get experience being NCS
During a disaster is not the ideal time to learn how to function effectively as an NCS. For some people it just comes naturally, but for most, it is an acquired and learned ability. Best to get some experience during normal nets BEFORE an actual disaster.
See Chapter 8 of the ARRL Emergency Communications manual for more info.
A note about toilets. Picking a shelter location with adequate facilities is always a problem and often the one picked is the only one standing or the best one still standing. Toilet facilities are a major concern. In many disasters electricity fails. When it does, water will not be delivered to most buildings and homes. How will you handle sanitation at your home in a disaster? Check the Emergency Essentials web site or get one of their monthly fliers. They have inexpensive toilets that will serve well in a disaster. Everybody should have one.
Emergency Essentials places different items on sale each month. You can build up a great home disaster kit and supply kit by buying items on sale each month. Here is the contact info.
Emergency Essentials
Get on their mailing list - diff items on sale each month
BePrepared.com/Utah
110 West 3300 South
801-994-1055
Here are some interesting web sites that I discovered on just the first two pages of a Google search on Emergency Shelter Communications.
Community Planning Toolkit for State Emergency Preparedness Managers
http://www.hhs.gov/od/disabilitytoolkit/index.html
Shelter-in-Place - Communication
http://www.hhs.gov/od/disabilitytoolkit/shelter/communication.html
THE ROLE OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION
TECHNOLOGIES IN THE PROCESS OF POST-DISASTER
HOUSING RECONSTRUCTION (PDF)
http://www.irbdirekt.de/daten/iconda/06059007139.pdf
How to Deliver Your Message from/to a Disaster Area (Click on the PDF logo in upper right corner)
http://dl.comsoc.org/livepubs/ci1/public/2011/jan/mase.html
Story: Amateur Radio Operators Provide Vital Communications Links Between Red Cross Shelters During Hurricane Earl
http://newsroom.redcross.org/2010/09/07/story-amateur-radio-operators-provide-vital-communications-links-between-red-cross-shelters-during-hurricane-earl/
OR
http://tinyurl.com/3o7at6b
Development of an Emergency Communication System for Evacuees of Shelters
[Abstract]
We propose a novel communication system for evacuees of shelters, termed "Shelter Communication System (SCS)". SCS is composed of a computer (termed Shelter Server) connected to the Internet and a set of personal computers (termed shelter PCs), one in each shelter, connected to Shelter Server through a temporal link and the Internet. SCS provides a message communication service between shelters as well as between shelters and outside the disaster area. Neither computer terminals nor cellular phones are required for those in the shelters. They write messages on specially-designed message sheets by hand. They receive messages on the sheets of paper printed by Shelter PCs. A prototype of SCS has been developed. A simple evaluation shows that SCS could provides service for 15,000 shelters and 750,000 people there, using 10 earth stations and wireless mesh networks.
This last one makes me think that we need to get some web developers to volunteer to build a shelter/disaster communications package for the web that can be used to log shelter patient names at the time of intake and make that available to other shelters in the area.
73s until next time.
O. D. Williams N7OZH
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