Emergency Radio Club of Reno County

Emergency Radio Club of Reno County

 Minutes of 10 October 2006 Meeting

The special called October meeting of the Emergency Radio Club of Reno County was called to order by club president Scott KCØBHE.

In attendance were Scott KCØBHE, Dwayne KBØFJI, Bill KCØVBF, Tom WØUY, Tim KA4CKR, Larry KØSFV, and Charles KBØSQL.

Tom WØUY began a discussion on the SET (Simulated Emergency Test) exercise. The national exercise date was October 7th; however an organization has until November 30 to run an exercise and still be considered part of the SET. Our exercise is scheduled to run Sunday October 15th from 2:00 PM until around 4:00 PM. The scenario is a train derailment with a hazardous materials spill/release. Using the ALOHA and MARPLOT tools of the Emergency Management department, the scenario will be further revealed during the exercise. There will be a number of locations which will need communications and therefore, an ERCRC member. Those are:

«     At least one Red Cross Shelter

«     The Incident Command Post (ICP)

«     A pet collection center

«     A medical location, probably the hospital

«     The Emergency Operations Center (EOC)

An item brought up for discussion was the manner in which the club members would be notified to respond to such an event. It was decided that we will develop a calling tree. The initial notification would come from Emergency Management. From there, the first member called would call the next, and so on.

It was then revealed that many of the members would not be available for the exercise if held on October 15th. It was decided to postpone the SET until November 11th during the CERT class exercise. The scenario may be changed somewhat to coincide with the CERT exercise.

The next order of business was moving our meeting day to separate our meeting from the RCKARA meeting. It was brought up that we don’t normally get much ERCRC club business accomplished because after the RCKARA meeting is over, most members are ready to go home. It was decided that we would move the meeting to the first Thursday of the odd months. This would be January, March, May, July, September, and November, unless a special meeting was called. The time would be at 7:00 PM and the meeting place would be the EOC in the basement of the Law Enforcement Center.

The next item was moving the ERCRC weekly net. There is a desire to use the brand-new repeater purchased through Emergency Management using Homeland Security Grant dollars. This repeater is replacing the 146.67- machine at Partridge. There is also a desire to go to a directed roll-call net, to instill some radio discipline and make passing messages more formalized. The ERCRC net would not be a social net, even though each member agreed that they thoroughly enjoyed the social net of the RCKARA club. The ERCRC net would be for training and recognition of emergency procedures.

Larry KØSFV asked if you would run the net by roll-call in an actual emergency. The answer given was that emergency and priority traffic is always taken first and before even routine traffic. The roll-call continues after the emergency and priority traffic has been handled. The roll-call also assists with accountability. It lets you know who is on the net and if someone suddenly is not there that was there before; you might need to check on them.

It was decided that the net would remain on Tuesday nights but we would move it to the 146.67- repeater and change the time to 7:30 PM. This would allow the ERCRC to utilize the new repeater and also to be finished in time to switch back to the 147.12+ repeater by 8:00 PM for the RCKARA net.

Tom made sure everyone knew about the WBØEOC website and all of the information it holds. Examples were the Net Control script for the ERCRC net, frequencies of local and regional repeaters, information on jump kits, “go-box” radios, NTS guidelines, photos and much more. The address is www.wb0eoc.org.

A motion was made by Scott KCØBHE that the meeting be adjourned. Motion was seconded by Tom WØUY. Motion carried and meeting was adjourned.

These minutes prepared by Club Secretary Tim KA4CKR