[karc] North East Ontario Regional Directors Report for March, 2012

From: Terry Barrett - VA3KLG <t-barrett@xxxxxxxx>
To: Kingston Amateur Radio Club <karc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2012 13:19:20 -0500
North East Ontario Regional Directors Report for March, 2012
Hopefully by now you will have seen the bulletins on restructuring being 
done in the Ontario ARES Field Organization. If you want more 
information please check out the RAC web pages and look for recent 
bulletins on the main page. Between reading the bulletin and our 
committee's final report you can probably see why we needed to change 
our field organization and the logic for coming up with the solution we did.

All this talk about EMCOMM's has gotten me thinking about Amateurs 
providing communications in the event we are needed. All professional 
First Responders and many Volunteer Organisations require their 
volunteers to have taken and passed the Incident Management System (IMS) 
course, IMS 100. This course was brought about after major fires in 
California years ago. There was confusion between various organizations 
regarding who was in charge, how do they communicate with each other and 
the logistics of getting resources, both people and hardware to the 
right place at the right time to name but a few.

As a result an IMS protocol was developed so that when various 
organizations respond to an incident the chain of command, response 
protocol and infrastructure is consistent. If responders are required 
from different jurisdictions they also are operating from the same play 
book. This is obviously a very simplified description of how it works 
but should give you an idea of what it is all about.

So what does this have to do with me as an Amateur? I am now hearing 
that the day may be close when anyone responding to an incident and does 
not have training in INS will not be allowed to help. This would include 
volunteers such as us.

The training is available from Emergency Management Ontario online and 
is free. Once you read through the instruction manual you can take the 
open book test online and when you pass you print out your certificate. 
You should be able to complete the entire course in 4 to 5 hours. Here 
is a link to EMO web site to get you going and I encourage you to check 
out the entire site as there is a lot of good information there.

_http://www.emergencymanagementontario.ca/english/training/ims100/ims100.html_

I am hoping and encouraging all RAC ARES members across Ontario to 
obtain this certification. It shows our commitment to being current and 
professional in our approach to EMCOMM's.

I am still looking for a Deputy Director for the North East Region. Next 
time I will outline the duties of the position. Give it a thought.

Rita and I are taking a little sabbatical for a while and will be 
visiting family. I will have email but it could be sporadic at times so 
please be patient if it takes a while for me to reply.

Finally I would like to thank all of you who joined or rejoined RAC in 
the last month at whatever level you chose. Thanks.

If you have any questions or concerns please email me at _ve3xt@xxxxxx 
<mailto:ve3xt@xxxxxx>_.


Bill VE3XT

North East Ontario Regional Director

Radio Amateurs of Canada

-- 
Terry Barrett VA3KLG
t-barrett@xxxxxxxx
[karc] North East Ontario Regional Directors Report for March, 2012

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