On Fri, 13 Jun 2008 20:01:28 EDT, Dick Grady AC7EL
wrote:

An emergency service organization should put up and maintain their own
repeaters. For example, in the last 3 years, the Southern Nye County (NV) ARES
group put up and maintain four repeaters (2 on 2M and 2 on 70cm) so we will have
them in emergencies. We make a point to talk on them at least once a day to
make sure they work. But 99% of the time they are idle, and thus may appear to
the casual observer to be unused.

If the area is urban enough. In rural Alberta we don't have a lot of
overlap between repeaters. But it's clearly understood by everyone
that emergency service has complete priority over all other traffic.

In Edmonton, a city of about 1 million yes they do have a repeater
dedicated to ARES without a lot of other chatter on it.

Tony