Smoke Signals To Carrier Pigeons To Amateur Radios And Beyond CERT Communications Methods

Your Presenters This Morning Jim Yoke Emergency Services Coordinator Santa Clara County Fire Department KI6HKZ Manny Sanchez Production & Operations Television Engineer Los Angeles County Office of Education om om KD6KOE

Participants: Who Are You?? We Need To Know So That We Can Plan Tomorrow’s Exercise Properly

Workshop Objectives Teach how different CERT missions, plans, jurisdictional expectations, and supplies influence CERT communications. Discuss the possibilities concerning who will need communications equipment. Show different CERT communications systems. Show different radios and their characteristics.

Let’s talk about the relationship between today’s workshop and tomorrow’s exercise for a moment.

CERT Communications Depend On The Program’s Mission & Methods Of Operations. Any Questions? Seeing None, Let’s Go Home. Okay, Maybe Not Yet.

What About Mission? They’re not all the same – not at all!! – Some are neighborhood based – Some expect you to go to a designated location and wait for deployment/assignment – Some programs just “train and release” – they’re nothing more than training factories – Some only will do what’s in the book – Some do all sorts of wild and crazy things – How does the DSW program fit into this?

What About Methods Of Operations? Organizational Layers – Field – EOC – Anything in between? – Differences between large and small cities – Who are your communicators? CERT people or RACES people (or maybe some sort of blend)? Who activates them and who do they report to? – For the uninitiated, yes, we love our acronyms!!

More On Methods Of Operations Supplies – All you’ve got is what’s on your back – good luck! – Larger more portable supplies – suitcase on wheels concept – Fixed neighborhood supply caches – Tuff Shed sort of thing – Large designated locations with serious quantities of supplies

And More Operations Stuff Simple question with a tricky answer…..WHO IS SUPPOSED TO TALK TO WHOM?? Field people talk to each other…somehow Field people need to talk to EOC people…somehow Do you remember your ICS lessons and the “Chain Of Command” idea? How in the world are we to figure this out?

Plans Are The Answer People have to sit down, talk things over, make some decisions, write them down, and get them approved Plans must be written (fun job, let me tell you!) People need to be trained on those plans People have to practice those plans and find out what needs improving

What Kinds Of Plans Matter? An Emergency Operations Plan (EOP) A CERT Operational Plan – this can have many different titles but this is probably the simplest and best A CERT Communications Plan – Frequencies & channels for CERT use – What about schools, hospitals, licensed residential facilities, and the general public?

Incident Command System Tips For you ICS junkies out there, having CERT live and function in the Operations Section makes perfectly good sense. Can CERT find itself anywhere else also? Answer: You bet!! Think about Logistics!

So How Do We Communicate Anyway? Face to face with hand written messages on a piece of paper – hey, don’t knock it!! I seriously anticipate riding my bicycle all over the place after an earthquake. Landline telephones – maybe but there are issues. Cellular phones – very doubtful but let’s talk a little about bandwidth and texting. FRS radios – love the little guys, but they do have limitations GMRS – forget about it Amateur radio – the best communications system ever invented!!

Radio Procedures & Etiquette Push, pause, talk, pause, let go – this is really hard for some people Doubling – this happens all the time but is for the most part preventable Emergency Traffic – if somebody has this stay the heck out of their way Brevity – think about what you want to say before you say it Directed Nets and Net Control

What Can Go Wrong? Lots!! What about when the power goes out? What happens when the infrastructure gets beat up? So you need a generator… – How much power do you need? – Does it really work (easy monthly tests vs. carrying a load for an extended period of time)? – Fuel – huge issue!! How much are you allowed to store ahead of time? How will you get it during a disaster? How durable are different systems?

Best Practices If you have a radio, do you know how to program it? Equipment, go-kits, and more Your radio won’t be of much use if it isn’t charged So many more, and more, and more…

Questions?