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A message from the ARCBA Chapter DST Lead Peter Sheerin:

Team,
We are planning to have the next comm meeting on Sunday, March 20th, at 10:00am, at the Oakland Red Cross office.

This date was chosen to provide enough time to arrange schedules, yet happen as soon as possible. We had to avoid the previous two Saturdays due to conflicts with CPR Saturday and a couple of key people being in training classes.

There are several things we need to work on–here’s my preliminary agenda:

1. Equipment Distribution
   • Greg Albrecht and I have worked up a draft plan of how to distribute the 800 MHz radios. We will present our plan, and look for input on what we may have missed, and determine what else needs to be tweaked. We will schedule a work party ASAP after that to reprogram the radios and then get them distributed according to that plan.
2. Budgeting–we need to come up with two types of budget requests.
   • One is for immediate short-term fixes (some of you have already provided this). Bad coax, flakey radios, broken towers–anything that is preventing us from operating.
   • Two is for us to come up with an annual maintainance budget.
   • Three is for refreshing our older equipment. I’d like us to begin replacing our older equipment for reliability, and so that we can have commonality in equipment across the chapter
3. We need to design a chapter comm plan. I imagine this will take up most of the meeting. Please think about what we need to do as a chapter, and what differences we will need from county to county. I’ll share the existing documentation we have as a starting point, but we really have never had much more than an outline, and we need something much more comprehensive. Think about our mission, which resources we have, and which other groups we need to interface with (ARES, CERT, etc.). What additional training do we need?

I imagine we will spend most of the time on brainstorming the beginnings of our comm plan. I’d like to spend 15 minutes each on the first two items and get them out of the way so we can focus our energy on developing our plan for the rest of the year.

Email: dcomms@googlegroups.com is now sfdst@googlegroups.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/dcomms is now http://twitter.com/sfdst

Caregivers –  must have current CPR Pro or BLS certification, in addition to professional license / certifications.

Recorders -  must have current lay CPR certification and First Aid.

Communicators -  need to be FCC licensed HAM radio operators and have a dual band HAM hand held radio.

WHAT: Nike Women’s Marathon, San Francisco

WHEN: Sunday, October, 17th 2010

3:30 AM – (time to be  confirmed) until 2:30 pm

Note:    This is 3:30 AM Sunday morning until 2:30 p.m. Sunday afternoon

WHERE: Staging Area: Pier 54, San Francisco

Free T-shirt, Breakfast, Lunch & much more!

REGISTRATION IS TO BE COMPLETED ONLINE :

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2010NikeMarathon

Please scan & email copies (front and back) of certificates and licenses to NikeStaffing@redcross-bayarea.org or FAX them to (415) 963-4430.

Any questions, email Nikestaffing@redcross-bayarea.org or call (415) 427-8092.

10/05 6:30 PM – 9:00 PM
HCT Buttons and Knobs Class ~ Get to Know Your Radio

10/06 6:30 PM – 9:00 PM
HCT Buttons and Knobs Class ~ Emergency Messaging

10/07 6:30 PM – 9:00 PM
HCT Buttons and Knobs Class ~ Radio Tech & Advanced Skills

All training takes place at SFFD Division of Training at 19th and Folsom Streets. If you’re interested in attending please email sffdnert@sfgov.org.

The American Red Cross Bay Area (ARCBA) San Francisco Disaster Communications Team (DComms) is holding a Communications Treasure Hunt on Saturday, September 18th from 9:00AM to 1:00PM at Pier 54, San Francisco, CA. The goal if this exercise is to gain experience in these areas:

1. Radio communications in a dense urban environment.
2. Formal message handling.
3. Establishing and operating a radio traffic net.
4. Working with communications volunteers of different skill levels.
5. Incident Management techniques.
6. Radio programming and theory.

THIS EVENT IS OPEN TO ALL RED CROSS VOLUNTEERS. All existing Red Cross volunteers are invited to attend, prior radio experience nor possession of a radio license is required. This will be a field exercise, so please bring comfortable walking shoes or a personal mode of transportation (bicycle, skates, scooter, etc). Lunch will be served!

If you are interested in attending this exercise, please RSVP by Friday, September 17th:

• RSVP by email: arcba.dcomms@gmail.com
• RSVP by phone: 1-415-504-2721

For more information please contact the ARCBA SF Disaster Communications Team:

• Email: arcba.dcomms@gmail.com
• Phone: 1-415-504-ARC1 (1-415-504-2721)
• Twitter: http://twitter.com/dcomms
• Web: http://arcba.net/teams/sfo
• Calendar: (web): http://bit.ly/dcomms-cal
• Calendar (iCal): http://bit.ly/dcomms-ical

Sincerely,
Greg Albrecht & Lawrence Lin
SF Disaster Communications Leads
American Red Cross Bay Area
85 Second Street, 8th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94105

Please contact him at +1 650 593 3811.

This class will help prepare us for the stress of working 12-hour shifts under difficult circumstances–in other words, SOP on a DRO.

If you’re around before the meeting starts at 7:00, consider dropping in to lend a hand. Planned projects include:

• Uprighting a Motorola radio cabinet that was donated to us, and figuring out how to secure it to the side wall.
• Removal of the AC wiring distribution panel
• Running the 8 gauge 12 VDC wire from the dashboard to the rear