ARES® District 6 Park
County |
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ARES® District 6 Park
County |
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ARES Training There has been much discussion on the ARES EC reflector regarding the
training and participation which should be required of ARES members. At this
time, the only requirements to belong to ARES are an Amateur Radio License and a
desire to serve. Note also that some D6 members have not yet provided the necessary
information to Dutch in order to receive Credentialing from Park County. At the
discretion of the served agency, lack of Credentialing from Park County and/or
lack of certification of completion of the above courses may prevent you from
being allowed to serve in an emergency. ARES D-6 REPEATERS AND LOST
HIKERS SUPPORT: On the evening of May 26, 2008 a call from Roger KØYY on the PCRC repeater system (146.895 & 146.910) who was looking for stations to monitor the system. Roger was up at the Burning Bear Camp ground on the Guanella Pass Road with the Alpine SAR group. They were looking for two overdue hikers in very poor weather conditions: fog, rain and snow. Padre WØWPD had alerted me that Roger was on 2 meters and looking for monitoring stations. The campground is on the Southern side of the Pass and this makes it convenient for the Hams in the SAR teams to use the Kenosha repeater. In fact, that location is really the only repeater that they can use to get to the outside world. The Alpine SAR has 17 Hams in it’s group.
SUCCESS: THE HIKERS WERE LOCATED and Roger got home about 00:30. National Response
Framework The National Response Framework was approved 1/22/08, and will supercede the National Response Plan effective 3/22/08. There is a website for the National Response Framework at http://www.fema.gov/nrf/ which contains information regarding what has changed, as well as the core document, Annexes, Reference Information, and Training information. The new introductory training for the National Response Framework is IS-800.B National Response Framework, An Introduction. This course is an interactive web-based course which takes approximately 3 hours to complete, and was made available 2/4/08. It consists of 6 lessons, each of which must be completed before you get credit for it and can proceed to the next lesson. In other words, you must complete the lesson once you have started it, or you will have to go through the entire lesson again. Once you have completed all lessons you take the final exam, which is graded immediately. Following successful completion of the test, you will receive an email within 1 business day giving you access to print out (and save) your certificate of completion. I think this course is a significant improvement over the previous IS-800, and encourage all ARES members to take it as soon as possible. 73,
Jack Colorado ARES Organization All:
Section Emergency Coordinator Wes Wilson, KØHBZ and I have implemented
changes to the Colorado ARES organization. We have noted these changes
and issued a statement of operational philosophy. If you have an
interest in Colorado ARES, please read the message at http://www.k0rm.net/ARES.html
73,
ARRL Colorado Section District Reorganization Effective 1/6/08, District 6 covers Park County only. Chaffee and Lake Counties are now in District 18.
National Response Plan
For those of you who have not heard, the National Response Plan has been changed
to the National Response Framework by DHS. I have already had some calls about
how this will affect those who have already taken the IS-800 course. I spoke
with a DHS representative while in Emmitsburg and they said that everyone who
has taken the IS-800 test has met the national requirement and will NOT be
required to update the test.
Lori R. Hodges Training Officer Note: I am
reading up on the National Response Framework and will post additional
information on it on the Training page soon - WØDSV AFTER ACTION REPORT ON SEPT.8, 2006
OUTWARD BOUND RELAY RACE The race consisted of 135 teams made up of up to ten members per team.
Each member runs a number of legs from Idaho Springs to Glenwood Springs in
a 24 hr period of time. Total mileage is 170 miles. The runner coming in
from their leg must touch the other team member that is starting their leg
of the run. District 6-communication support area was from Clear Creek Campground
on the Georgetown side of Guanella Pass to Jefferson Lake. There were 6
exchange points that we covered with radio support, because cell phones are
spotty or do not work at all in that area and the satellite phones had too
much cloud cover to be of any use. The weather was somewhat against us for a perfect day. It rained all day
and snowed at the top of Guanella Pass, hard at times and Mike KC0ATI said
it was up to 3 inches when he came down from the pass. The Aspen are
starting to turn gold on the hillsides, which was a nice sight. The most of the traffic that we passed was when the first runner arrived
at an exchange point or the last runner left the exchange point and when the
station was closing down. We did have 3 important traffic to handle. One was
when a runner took a wrong turn and had not shown up at the exchange point
in the proper time. So they had to check back with the previous point to see
when the runner left. The runner did show up, but somewhat behind schedule
and nobody had to go looking for them. The other traffic involved a runner that lost their wedding band on the
trail. They said that their hands were so cold that the ring slipped off.
The ring was found and was to be delivered to the owner down the line. Padre did make a phone call to inform the safety director of the progress
of the Trail Sweeps, since their satellite did not work because of the cloud
cover. I am very pleased this was the extent of our traffic. I did want to hold to the so-called proper procedures for an event of this
kind. Since we did not have a NCS to control things, it did get somewhat lose
at times and I was at fault quite often for not following the procedures that
I recommended that we use. Other wise I think it went fairly well with very
few glitches, which we have learned from for the future. I appreciate the effort by all under adverse conditions
that we had to work with. I also want thank the people who volunteered but for
one reason or another could not make it. Next time I will call on you again. ATTENDEES. Monitoring Stations. Padre`s Group: Steve AIØW, Jim KCØOGY, Carl WH6ANH & Padre
WØWPD. In The Field: Roger KØYY, Mike KCØATI, Pete NEØT, Sharon NØDSV, Matt
AFØD, Bill NØOAX, Dick KCØQDD, Dolores KBØEUH, Neal KØUEM &
Dutch KØAWS. AGAIN, THANK YOU ALL. Dutch ARES DISTRICT 6. ARES
UP DATES SEASONS
GREETINGS TO ALL AGAIN AND THANKS FOR THE SUPPORT THIS PAST YEAR. D6 has been
offered a location to set up a station in the Platte Canyon Rescue
Service building and the use of the meeting room. Some of us feel that
this has some good possibilities and will be useful to both parties.
After the holidays will be a good time to look into our options. Big changes
in the Park County Communications Center. It will not be controlled by
one person, but by a 3-member board with a manager for the daily
operations. At the present time there are no room or plans for us to
move back in the building. Some are pushing for a new comm. Building.
This would give us another place for a good station. Even though
ARES and D6 are being accepted more and more in Park County, we still
have to keep up our training and the latest in various technology, not
just settle for voice on 2 meters. I would like to see more
people get involved with packet and amtor. If you are not sure about
getting started in this, I know some of the more experienced in the
latest methods will be glad to help us out. Keep up the training, we do
not know what next year will bring. Best Wishes. Dutch
KØAWS Tomahawk Fire Exercise ARES® Districts 6 and 23, Jefferson County
Incident Management Team, Jefferson County Emergency Operations Center,
Jeffco HEAT, and multiple fire districts and other organizations
participated in a training exercise wildfire incident in the Mill Iron
D area on Saturday, May 14, 2005. The Incident Command Center was at
Platte Canyon Fire Protection District Station 2 on Crow Hill.
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