COMMs 3

Now that we have the ground work laid out, here is a use scenario.

We will take a town of about 60,000 people, the whole county has maybe 75,000 people total. The area is divided into Wards for easier administration. Each ward has a leadership structure set up and they have a formal mutual aid agreement with all the other wards. [this is a civilian group set up to assist, but not replace the police, EMS and fire departments who have HAMs –who communicate with the wards in town AND other cities as needed- sitting along side the dispatchers in the EOC] .

For this discussion we will assume that there are 6 – 9 wards in this town.

In each ward most of the people involved would have CB radios, a few may decide to also have FRS/GMRS for limited use in some of their teams. The people with CBs would have range of maybe 5 miles but could be up to 15 miles, would communicate with their ward mates and their ward EOC. The ward EOC could be in a central location OR as a more practical matter a main ward EOC with 1 or 2 alternate EOCs so that the radio operators can work from their homes in a disaster or if one of the ward EOCs is knocked out. At the ward level the communications people would have both CBs so that they could talk with their ward mates and most likely 2 meter HAM radios to talk with all of the EOCs in town including the city’s main EOC. The city’s main EOC of course would have 2 meter ham radios and at least one of the longer range 20 to 160 meter radios – what ever frequency range that has been stipulated. The city’s main EOC also has the radios for law enforcement, EMS and fire. The city, county and state has mobile EOC too.

This is an overview and things would have to be worked out locally on the city / ward level.

We of course would like to hear YOUR thoughts on this topic.

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