Rough Draft – CERT Emergency Communications Plan

The work on the emergency communications plan is moving forward. Our plan covers two main contingencies:

  • team is deployed to an emergency site
  • team is not deployed but there is an emergency

One of our team goals is put ourselves in a position where we can help the broader community during a wider emergency, such as a grid down situation after a hurricane or power station sabotage (like the next county over went through in 2022).

This plan is a step towards achieving those goals. Later phases of plan development should help address the communications divide between the CERT team and the greater community. These later phases should also incorporate some of the great ideas that were generated in the brainstorming / brainwriting work.

The rough draft of the plan is below. Comments and suggestions are welcome.

Lee County CERT Team – Communications Plan
Rough Draft – dated 2023-03-18

Deployed Comms

At time of muster, team members will be assigned to a group and a backup group based on available communications tools and radios.

At time of muster, team members will also be assigned a cell phone number for a command staff member, where they can confirm the communication channel they should be using. This communication should occur via text message. This cell number can also be used to short messages between command staff, as needed. Primary communication method is radio communication.

Teams Communications

Priority 1 (Group 1) — Zello Channel – “Lee County Emergency Response Team”

Priority 2 (Group 2) – HAM Radio using the KB4HG repeater – 441.9500 / +5 MHz / 136.5 Tone

Priority 3 (Group 3) – MURS channel #3 (151.94 MHz)

Priority 4 (Group 4) – GMRS / FRS channel #15 (462.55 MHz) [Note: limited FRS range]

Priority 5 (Group 5) – CB channel #22

(Backup) Priority 1 – No backup, go to other group

(Backup) Priority 2 (Group 2) – HAM Radio using the NC4ML – 147.240 / +5 MHz / 91.5

(Backup) Priority 3 (Group 3) – MURS channel #5 (154.60 MHz)

(Backup) Priority 4 (Group 4) – GMRS / FRS channel #17 – 462.60 MHz [Note: limited FRS range]

(Backup) Priority 5 (Group 5) – CB channel #24

Note: Group 2 – If both HAM repeaters are not available, switch to Simplex 146.58 FM


Command Communications
Priority 1 (Group C1) — Zello Channel – “Lee County Emergency Response Team – Command”
Priority 2 (Group C2) – HAM Radio using Simplex 144.400

Priority 3 (Group C3) – MURS channel #2 (151.88 MHz)

Priority 4 (Group C4) – GMRS / FRS channel #19 (462.65 MHz) [Note: limited FRS range]

Priority 5 (Group C5) – CB channel #21

(Backup) Priority 1 – Use command text message number to ask which alternate group to use

(Backup) Priority 2 (Group 2) – HAM Radio using Simplex 144.800

(Backup) Priority 3 (Group 3) – MURS channel #4 (154.57 MHz)

(Backup) Priority 4 (Group 4) – GMRS / FRS channel #21 (462.70 MHz_ [Note: limited FRS range]

(Backup) Priority 5 (Group 5) – CB channel #23

Non-deployed Comms [used during emergency situation where CERT team isn’t deployed]

Use the following communications channels on the schedule below with a wilderness protocol (seeking to minimize power use in case the grid is down):

  • text message to designated contact
  • Group 1, Group 2, Group 3 (Carolina Trace local area), Group C1, Group C2
  • other groups activated in an extended emergency to provide greater footprint in community

    Note: number of groups is minimized to reduce the amount of time the command staff has to communicate with team members.
PurposeGroupDayTime
OrientationEmail or text message from command to start comm protocol, or event / emergency to trigger start, includes emergency text message contact number

Daily Check-In
(first 3 days only)
Group 1 – ZelloDaily07:00 PM

Group 2 – HAM RadioDaily07:15 PM

Group 3 – MURS (local to Carolina Trace area)Daily07:30 PM

Group C1 – ZelloDaily06:15 PM

Group C2 – HAM RadioDaily06:30 PM
Weekly Check-InGroup 1 – ZelloSunday07:00 PM

Group 2 – HAM RadioSunday07:30 PM

Group 3 – MURS (local to Carolina Trace area)Sunday08:00 PM

Group C1 – ZelloSunday06:00 PM

Group C2 – HAM RadioSunday06:30 PM
Daily Monitoring
(4th day and beyond)
Group 1 – ZelloDaily, except Sunday07:00 PM

Group 2 – HAM RadioDaily, except Sunday07:10 PM

Group 3 – MURS (local to Carolina Trace area)Daily, except Sunday07:20 PM

Group 4 – GMRSDaily, except Sunday07:30 PM

Group 5 – CBDaily, except Sunday07:40 PM

Group C1 – ZelloDaily, except Sunday07:50 PM

Group C2 – HAM RadioDaily, except Sunday08:00 PM
Anytime during emergencyText messages to command cell # – when radio or Zello comms aren’t availableAny dayAny time

Brainstorming! – CERT Emergency Communications Plan

We gathered as group at the training room in the local fire station. This was great venue with whiteboards and plenty of room to spread out.

Great team contributions
  1. Introduction
    • Participants – everyone introduced themselves
    • Plan for the morning
    • Go through the rules for brainstorming
      • Capture ideas as we go
      • No analysis or critiquing idea, instead just let the ideas flow. It is good to build on ideas
    • Looked at the buckets and challenge / specific questions
  2. Review the brainwriting results – quickly went through all of the brainwriting ideas
  3. Brainstorming session – after the first idea went out, this group really took off with ideas. We posted stickies with written ideas on the white board and grouped them by bucket.
  4. Analysis – we ended the brainstorming session. The next steps:
    • Everyone voted on their favorite ideas, working to identify ideas that we should explore
    • Talked about the highest priority ideas and looked for themes (ideas that grouped together around a common theme)
  5. Identified next steps and concluded the meeting

An enthusiastic group that really wants to find better ways to help out in the community during an emergency really made this morning a joy.

Here are some images of the ideas on the white board.

Results

Between the brainwriting and the brainstorming, the team generated over 140 ideas! Many of the ideas were very high quality. There is lots of interest in pursuing those ideas in the wild and turning them into actionable plans.

Thanks to everyone who participated.

We’ll publish detailed results in a separate blog post, or 2 or 3, where we can look at them in detail. The ideas and the themes we discovered are all helpful.

Next Step – Getting Ready for Brainwriting – CERT Emergency Communications Plan

The next step in developing our CERT Emergency Communications plan is the brainwriting challenge for team members.

Let us talk about brainwriting and how to do it

Challenge Question

How do we create a workable plan that allows the CERT team to communicate within the team, with local authorities and the community in an emergency

Specific Questions

  1. How do we communicate with all CERT members (Ham and non-Ham) during a deployment?
  2. If we have an issue with one communication path how do we let everyone know that we need to switch to another method (maybe another channel, repeater, app or method all together)?
  3. How does the CERT team communicate with the community during a grid down situation?
  4. How does the CERT team communicate between members (HAM and non-HAM) during a grid down situation?
  5. What would a one way communication / “beacon” do and how could it be accessible by hams, non-hams and the general community in an emergency?

Buckets

Deployed Communication
Communication between CERT and the community
Ham Comms
Non-Ham Comms
Grid Down
Beacon / One Way Comms
Digital Comms

Starting Our Journey – Developing Our CERT Emergency Communications Plan

Click on the play button to listen

Our local CERT team is working on a communications plan to cover 2 very different situations:

  1. deployed in an emergency
  2. not deployed, most likely in a longer term emergency or a grid down situation

CERT means Community Emergency Response Team. There are CERT teams across the United States.

We are going to document our work so others can leverage our work and make developing a communications plan easier for other groups. We hope to use standard innovation tools to use the knowledge within our local community. These tools include:

– brainwriting
– brainstorming

Our approach, ideas, and research can help you develop a plan for your local community or other group. Maybe even your family emergency communications plan. We are looking at incorporating the communications elements that we have available to our members:

  • CB radio
  • MURS, GMRS, and FRS radios
  • Ham frequencies, repeaters and digital technologies
  • Internet options such as Zello
  • Other options we haven’t even thought of yet
  • LoRa Meshtastic

Join us on the journey. Just listen to the podcast to follow along!

Thanks
Montie
KO4NQF