Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Nancy Lankford McCain on January 3, 2009 at 10:24pm

So, what plans do you have in place to "alter the ego" and mindset of those in high places? Is your department paid or volunteer?

Permalink Reply by Rob on January 23, 2009 at 12:29am

In my department (almost all vol., got a few PT. guys for medic coverage when no vol. around) we do not train with hams. This is very unfortunate since my chief is a ham, one of our bat chiefs is a ham, and I am a ham (of course I am the only active ham). Our communications is handeled by the county sherrif and they only recently started to even consider hams only because the local EMA was pushing it. Now on the plus side I am also a communications volunteer within the EMA (seperate from ARES or RACES or anything like that). With that said, we are working with all agencies in the county (slowly but working) to get them a better understanding of what options there are out there for back up communications (including but not limited to ham). We are very fortunate to have a large Motorola dealer in town and they have many toys that we have at our disposal, so ham radio might be lower on the priority list, but hams themselves are higher on the list due to technical expertise and their networking ability. When Hurricane Ike decided to deliver Hurricane force winds to Ohio in September 2008 and knocked out power to much of the area for several days (6 days at my house) there was very little ham radio activity in support of operations past the damage assessment on the day of the storm, but it was hams who staffed communications and telephone positions in the EMA offices and EOC for several days along with a handfull of county employees from various agencies who volunteered to come up without overtime pay to answer phones. Hams also delivered county owned generators to key locations and did field level trouble shooting of some generator equipemnt durring the same incident. The EMA at least has realized that hams are a valuable resource and are usefull in more than just talking on ham radios. Hopefully after my little project to put a station in my firehouse (my own equipment I might add) that will be capable of 70cm down to 75m except 220 and 6m my chief will realize there is potential.