In article ,
Jeffrey Angus wrote:

Now, here's where the problem lies.

ESPECIALLY in the event of an emergency. The health and law
enforcement types do NOT want some fool running around thinking
he's a cop. (Or a paramedic). Nor do they want to deal with some
buffoon that's really proud of the "kit" he's thrown together
out of cobbled swap meet leftovers. And they most certainly do
NOT want people with ego problems.

What they want are people that follow instructions, that have
RELIABLE equipment and if it's a group of people, that
they can all work together as a team.

Yup. That's how I see it from here.

One of the big changes in the emergency-response community, over the
past couple of decades, has been the development of some standardized
organization techniques for emergency responders. As I understand it,
a lot of these changes grew out of what was learned in California
during the response to the Oakland Hills fire in 1991. To put it
simply, that event was a Charlie Foxtrot - lots of official emergency
responders were activated, from a large number of jurisdictions, and
they had a *terrible* time working together under emergency conditions.

This was due to a number of factors. Different jurisdictional groups
(e.g. city fire, county fire, state, etc.) had different
organizational structures (who-reports-to-whom) with different job
titles and job descriptions, they referred to their firefighting
equipment with different terms (or sometimes with the same term, which
meant very different things to different groups), and they had no
agreement in advance as to who would be commanding whom. There were
multiple different chains-of-command, with each new group trying to
coordinate itself with numerous others. Add a large dash of
"incompatible radio systems and protocols" to this, and what resulted
was a recipe for serious confusion and ineffective use of resources.
I believe it's generally accepted that people died unnecessarily,
because the emergency responders weren't able to work together as
efficiently as was needed.

What has come out of this is a reliance on the Incident Command System
structure (California has its Standardized Emergency Management System
variant, and the Feds have the National Incident Management System).
A big part of this involves using a standard command-and-reporting
structure, and standardized (pre-defined) sets of resources, which can
include communications teams. This way, if one jurisdiction needs
some communicators, they can ask another jurisdiction for one or more
teams of various types, and have confidence that they can know the
capabilities and limits of those teams pretty reliably.

Around our county, anybody who wants to be part of ARES/RACES, and
actually be deployable even in their own local jurisdiction, is
expected/required to be trained in ICS (we have some state-certified
instructors who teach classes periodically). Anyone who wants to be
deployable outside their own city (a "Mutual Aid Communicator") has to
take further instruction in ICS and emergency response (FEMA has some
good on-line courses, available for free) and must be qualified by
their city EC as having sufficient training and experience, and a
suitable "Go Kit" of radio equipment and personal supplies to allow
for safe and successful deployment.

We've got an advanced training program for our MACs, in which they can
demonstrate their qualification for specific sorts of deployment...
Field assignment, Net Control positions, Shadowing, Packet, and so
forth.

As a result, if a city asks for communication aid, and says that they
need field operators for deployment at a dozen shelters and fire
stations, and Net Control operators for two or three tactical and
resource nets, we can deploy people that we *know* can do the job
(individually and as part of a team), because they've already
demonstrated that ability. The various city and county Emergency
Managers appreciate this!

Hams who show up "spontaneously", during an emergency, saying "I have
a radio and I want to help"... well, most likely they'll be treated
like any other volunteer of unknown capabilities and reliability.
They'll be sent down the street to the "convergent volunteer" center
for classification and possible assignment, just like any other
helpful citizen who showed up and (e.g.) offered to fill sand-bags
during a flood. If we don't know them, we can't depend on them in a
pinch.

At best, they might be sent out as a secondary-support operator, to
serve alongside one or more trained and qualified team members. In
our city, at least, we would *not* send out an unknown operator by
him/herself.

All of this organization and training takes work - often a lot of it -
well in advance of any emergency. If we want to actually be
effective, and able to help, it's *necessary*.

http://www.scc-ares-races.org/ has a lot of information on our
programs... the "Mutual Aid Communicator" pages probably have the best
discussion of our training process.

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
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