County Amateur Radio Public Service Corp (ARPSC) Weekly Net Thursday at 8 pm on 146.900 MHz/100pl Hospital Radio Net on the last Thursday of each month Web Site: http://www.arpsc.com Meeting Minutes for 2 May 2007: On 2 May 2007 at 7:00 pm, Joel Goldberg, W8HIU, Emergency Coordinator (EC) for the Oakland County ARPSC, called the meeting to order in the County IT auditorium. The order of business included: (I). Welcome to ARPSC Members by Joel Goldberg, W8HIU, Emergency Coordinator of the Oakland County ARPSC: Our primary reason for being here tonight is the Oakland County Health Department (OCHD) has asked our ARPSC to provide radio support during a medical incident. Our key-note speaker will detail one emergency that could involve us. (II). Keynote Speaker – Sara Wade, Oakland County Health Department: Oakland County Health Division's Emergency Preparedness Unit is committed to protecting the public's health and safety by preparing for all types of emergencies such as natural disasters, disease outbreaks and/or chemical spills. Federal mandated programs include treatment and handling of chemical related illnesses (CRI). An aerosolized anthrax attack in Oakland County will be discussed tonight. In such an event, OCHD would provide oral medications to the population of Oakland County. To do so, we have only a small window of time - 48 hours to distribute the medicines to the public before it was too late to save them and the mortality rate reaches 90% or more. Obviously, OCHD does not have enough help to hand out bottles of medicines to take home. So plans are to have (1) each of the county's school districts to hand out the bottles of pills to citizens with children, (2) and community sites to all other citizens. In Oakland County, this amounts to 57 emergency dispensing sites, with the school districts handling 48% of the population and community sites 52%. OCHD would provide information for use of the oral medicines. An anthrax attack could well be limited to a smaller part of the county and fewer citizens. Query: Are hospitals part of this? Answer: Yes, we will be working with hospitals, but not for dispensing of medicines. Dispensing sites are only to dispense meds, not to treat patients. Hospitals treat patients. Query: Will citizens be checked for their addresses? Answer: No, there is not enough time. TV, cable channels, and commercial radio will be used to dispense information on locations of sites and what citizens should do. Query: When does the plan activate? Answer: All sites will be open for 48 hours. Forty-eight hours start when the attack takes place. Practically, it is the last twelve hours that many of the 1.2 million people with Oakland County will get the meds. Query: What about the elderly and disabled who might not get out? Answer: A neighbor or relative will be permitted to take meds home to them. Query: How much training will the school staff need? Answer: They just dispense the meds but do not regulate its dispensing. Query: Would there be total activation of all the sites or only part of them? Answer: Depends where the problem occurs in the county. The plan is to open all sites if enough staff is available. Query: Do plans include traffic control? Answer: Yes. We are also doing security assessments. Query: Is the anthrax medicine one dose? Answer: Each person gets a bottle of pills for his/her treatment. Further dispensing at a later time may be needed. Query: What about covering the hospitals for communication during such an emergency? Steve Iannucci answered that the ARPSC members would be working in total with all sites. (III). Comments from the Emergency Coordinator - Joel Goldberg, W8HIU: Emergency communication during an anthrax attack is why we are here, but an influenza pandemic would be different. Pandemic flu event might require coverage up to 3 weeks, which is different from the 2 day coverage for an anthrax attack. The health department wants us to develop a core of ham radio volunteers to go to 30+ sites. That means we need three volunteers per day for each site or a minimum total of 90 volunteers. If we are 3 deep for a 24 hours shift for days, some redundancy or extra help would be useful. The actual sites are not yet known to us, but each site is set up to cover a two mile circular diameter in the county. Photo ID's would be issued. ARPSC volunteers would be assigned a site closest their home. Volunteers will need a handheld transceiver (dual band radio preferred), a RACES card, at least an IS-22 class to participate. Those volunteers in the field would check-in by way of the repeater. Families of volunteers would be inoculated. Several health department sites are known to have poor reception/transmission problems inside their buildings and will need to work to solve these problems. By the end of June, we hope to have all survey work done, but don't want to go into the schools at this time. Whether it is eight or twelve hour shifts at each site will depend on how long the problem continues. If the emergency hits too hard, we may need to reassign volunteers. We do have 200+ members, but how many are willing to participate is unknown. Training will be provided. In the event that some emergency does occur, our notification is thus: Oakland County Health Department (OCHD) notifies Oakland County Emergency Response and Preparedness (ER&P), who notifies Oakland County ARPSC, who then notifies member volunteers. A volunteer sign-up sheet was passed around to members. Saturday, 27 October 2007 will be the Health Department's Flu Shot Clinics. (IV). Comments from Steve Iannucci, Oakland County Emergency Response and Preparedness: Flu shots, or immunization shots for flu continue to be a problem. The strains keep changing and so do these shots with their development and stock piling. Anti-viral meds also have problems. (V). Comments from John Fleming, K8UP District 2 Michigan Section ARPSC Emergency Coordinator: District II consists of the following counties: Oakland, Macomb, St. Clair, Wayne, Monroe, and Washtenaw. Extra assistance for a chemically related illness emergency or other emergencies could be requested through District II. However, more important is to have exercises to get acquainted and practice handling such emergencies. We need more participation and perhaps two or more exercises a year. The exercises should involve mutual aid between counties. If on duty, the county can be expected to furnish meals, but each volunteer needs to prestock at home sufficient supplies of food, water, and medicines for at least one week. John mentioned that during the Michigan QSO Party on 21-22 April, 2007, Oakland County ARPSC was able to contact several very difficult-to-get counties in Michigan with a HF transceiver. John Fleming, K8UP and Bill Bond, W8WRB were at a Region II South meeting recently. These counties have different set-ups for emergency communications with 37 "jump kits" which can be used in the hospitals. These "jump kits" have a standard transceiver and a HT which can be set in cross band repeat mode if needed. Currently, these county ARPSC's are in the process of installing antennas in their hospitals. John recommends our ARPSC to get training with these "jump kits." (VI). Comments from Bill Bond, W8WRB, Hospital Radios: On Wednesday, 16 May 2007, the Genesee County ARPSC will be involved in a stimulated test exercise (SET) and are looking for volunteers to assist with assignments. The SET involves an air crash at Bishop International Airport involving Police, Fire, 911, hospitals, etc. Volunteers need to be registered by 9 May 2007 and must have a HT and a black shirt. Three ATV's may be set up. The SET starts at 8 am at the staging area and can be expected to go into the afternoon. Genesys Hospital will be receiving their hospital radio from us in about one week, which will be utilized by the Genesee County ARPSC personnel. This hospital is important to us since it is a main receiving site for patients from northern Oakland County. Last Thursday's Hospital Net did not get a check-in from Botsford Hospital. Larry Hornsby, KB8POD and Bill did this hospital's check-in on the following night, giving us 100% check-ins for the month. A year ago in June, we had 42% check-ins, and are now up to 96%. The ICOM IC-2720 transceiver has been discontinued from production which poses a problem. Southfield Providence still needs a new radio. For members using the hospital radios, channel 0 is the frequency you want, unless otherwise instructed by the Hospital Net Control. (VII). Comments from Mike Nebel, N3BEL, AEC of Sirens: Next month, there will be five hot sirens and seven schools to check. The question with the schools is whether the closest siren can be easily heard in the schoolyard. The last two Thursday night nets of this month will have information on the sirens before the June siren test. Steve Iannucci, ER&P, mentioned each siren has a 5200 foot range to be heard by citizens outdoors. For those schools which do not have a siren close enough, government funds are available. Steve noted Oakland County now has 226 tornado warning sirens, of which 90% are now 2001 model two-way sirens with computer monitor. Oakland County sirens are only used for tornados. They will sound the siren if a tornado is possible, and not only if one is actually touching down. When a siren is heard, turn on the radio and television for more information. (VIII). Comments from Randy Love, WF5X, AEC Repeater Operations: The Milford/Commerce receive site should begin operations soon. The antenna tower is actually in Commerce and is considered the best site available. Time is still needed to climb the tower to place the antenna and cable. This site will be receive only because a two-way "simulcast" is too costly to operate and also requires synchronization with the main repeater. Joel Goldberg, W8HIU added the repeater is now coordinated for the frequency of 146.900. The Oakland County Road Commission is selling the old Bald Mountain site. Our antennas have been moved to a water tower nearby, which has a powerful new back-up generator. Also, funding has become available to replace the old 440 repeater equipment. Steve Murphy, N8NM, county radios, is coming off the sick list and plans to rid the repeater of its hum. VE testing during the summer months is estimated to be about 300 sessions for the U.S. Randy is still looking for VE volunteers to assist. An AGW packet engine + a digi system have been installed at the EOC. This program is the heart of the packet system and does all the traffic between packet applications and terminal node controller (TNC) which processes packet. It has the capability to handle 100 TNCs and 100 applications at the same time with wireless hubs. The Lapeer County Amateur Radio Club now has a system called TELPAC. TELPAC is a new mechanism for delivering mail from the Winlink 2000 system to the wireless ham user. TELPAC" stands for TELnet PACket bridge. Lapeer's packet system uses 223.400 MHz. It is our plan to adopt the same frequency as they have. (IX). Comments from Gary Bouwkamp, N8HMP, W8OAK Web Master: Gary needs one of the the digital subject matter experts to help update the APRS and packet section. Updated information is also needed on area ham clubs and their nets, including those not listed. (X). Comments from Gary Sklar, K8IKW, Public Service Information: Upcoming Events 18 – 20 May 2007: Dayton Hamvention. The Arrow Amateur Radio Club is running a Dayton bus transport on Saturday. Info to Jeff Zipan, w8sgz@tsshome.com. Bus leaves at 4:30 am and costs $60. 2 June 2007: Oak Apple Run, Royal Oak. Hams needed, please contact Mike, WD8S. Wednesday, 13 June 2007: Hazel Park ARC Banquet. Purchase your tickets now. 29 – 30 June 2007: Field Day (XI). Comments from Sean Fleming, K8KHZ, NTS Liasion: The SE Michigan Traffic Net is at 10:15 on 145.330/100pl Sunday through Saturday and delivers radiograms from HF to be dispersed over Oakland County. At the moment, there are not enough operators picking up the traffic for this county. Please help. (XII). Comments from Joel Goldberg, W8HIU, E.C: For those people bringing guests into the EOC, security can be a problem. Guests are welcome, but must have a member sponsor to get in through the doors. Call us beforehand to open the front door. Respectfully submitted, James R. Murphy, N8SML Secretary Oakland County ARPSC 3 May 2007