On 15 Jul 2004 16:09:57 GMT, Steve Robeson K4CAP wrote:

That's why they are spending tons of bucks on the Emergency
Communicators course. Also, here in Tennessee, funds were allocated
to equip EVERY hospital in Tennessee with at least one VHF/UHF and one
HF transceiver, along with funds to get folks qualified to use them. I
don't know if that program is a TN-only program or not.

It's in the new nationwide JACO (Hospital Joint Accreditation
Committee) standards. That's how I got co-opted from the county
RACES/AREC program into the Providence St. Vincent Hospital (former
Catholic Charities Hospital) Disaster Communications Team although I
am neither Catholic nor Charitable.

We were lucky that we had two nurses who were hams before this
project started, and that the hospital administration has been very
generous in putting its hand into its pocket and coming up with
funds whenever we needed them. Five dual-band and two tri-band
VHF/UHF radios, three TNCs, two recycled laptop computers......we're
the packet node for the inter-hospital and RACES/AREC packet network
plus three voice circuits (two to the county and one regional
inter-hospital), plus SSTV which the administrators use to transfer
status diagrams between hospitals. We back up the regional and
local 800 MHz systems totally.

Our next quarterly exercise will involve relocation of the EOC (and
the radio equipment) from its primary position to a backup site
across the campus while the exercise is running. That ought to be
fun.

--
73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane

From a Clearing in the Silicon Forest
Beaverton (Washington County) Oregon