The San Mateo County Red Cross Response Communications team provides emergency communications support for the local Red Cross office.
Our weekly meetings are at 7:00 pm every Monday evening:
1710 Trousdale Drive, Burlingame, CA 94010
On the 2nd Monday of the month, our meeting coincides with the monthly Disaster Services meeting, in which we participate. There is usually a light buffet served before the Disaster Services meeting, starting at 6:30 pm.
Our club call sign is WB6RC, as in:
Whiskey Burlingame Six Red Cross
or
Whiskey Bravo Six Romeo Charlie
The group’s purpose is to give its members the opportunity to become expert communicators proficient with all aspects of and amateur radio, including voice, Morse code, packet, APRS, net control, logging, DXing, and contesting.
We meet weekly because we’re passionate about amateur radio and believe that increasing the Bay Area’s emergency communications capabilities sufficiently to prepare for the next natural disaster here require this level of effort.
Our current projects include:
- Updating our interoffice communications capability and procedures, via our 800 MHz repeater system, 47 MHz simplex, and a satellite telephone system, to make sure we can talk to all the other Red Cross offices in the Bay Area.
- Rebuilding the Chapter’s Comm Van into the best emergency
communications vehicle in the Bay Area. - Upgrading the equipment in the office’s Disaster
Services/Communications room to function as the situational - awareness hub for local disasters.
Joining the Response Communications Team
To join our team, stop by any of our meetings to discover what we’re up to and see if it’s up your alley. Then you can contact the San Mateo County Coordinator of Disaster Volunteers, Leslie Toy at ToyL@usa.RedCross.org or +1 650 259 1775.
If you would like to volunteer with another county’s communications team, contact the American Red Cross Bay Area at ARCBAv@usa.redcross.org or +1 888 229 8652 to begin the volunteer sign-up process.