EmergencyOperationsandCommunicationsCenter

Newsletter

Issue 4, June 2017

ClallamCounty,Washington

(EOC)EmergencyOperationsandCommunications

CenterTheLighthouseForClallamCounty

CitizensDuringAnEmergency

Clallam County takes predictions of a Cascadia Subduction Earthquake seriously. Professional fire, law enforcement and emergency management personnel will have their hands full in a huge disaster situation, so volunteer teams of Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT) have been created to assist in saving lives. This drill gives these individuals a simulated hands-on crisis experience. Ten CERT teams of 20-members each are tasked with search and rescue operations that include triaging of injured residents, transporting via litters and providing limited medical treatment to survivors. During the drill they’ll go building to building practicing lie-saving skills as a major survivability resource for residents after a devastating quake, or other disaster. These volunteers will also practice communicating with uniformed responders, which

Sequim, The American Red Cross and Clallam Fire District #3. It will be the largest CERT drill conducted in the county. The eastern part of Clallam Cty has more than 10,000 homes across 142 square miles. They each need to be checked within the first week of a major quake. So teams of CERT volunteers are being organized and trained to be sure no one is left unaccounted for, or trapped for an extended period of time.

Hands-On Earthquake Drill Saturday, June 3, 2017 in Sequim

By Penny Linterman

Looking Back at Jeffco Exercise and Ahead to June With National Guard By Ron Cameron, Sheriff’s Office I’ll keep it short this month as most of May, I’ve been tasked elsewhere. In the Sheriff’s Office, we are transitioning management of the evidence section from me to Chief Hoffman. This requires a 100% audit of all property and evidence we have on hand, so it’s been slow. The good news is, once completed, my role in evidence management becomes quite small and I will have more time to dedicate to Emergency Mgt. The biggest thing I want to do is send my sincere thanks to those who participated in the joint exercise with Jefferson County. While the artificialities were plentiful, the true goal was the participation. Continued on page 2

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Ron Cameron Continued from page 1 Director Sterbenz was absolutely right when she said the event was a complete success at the point we started and all sat down together. We live in a corner of the world where it’s almost impossible to do it yourself. Relying on our neighbors is what we relay to our citizens in our MYN and CERT training. So that’s exactly what we need to do to help make ourselves successful; rely on our neighbors for help.

The Jeffco exercise was a little confusing and ambiguous, but you all gave it your all and your dedication is once again noted and appreciated. We will get a chance to reciprocate

soon when Jeffco comes here and we throw some of our stuff at them. We are continuing to develop the June exercise with the National Guard. We have promised ourselves on every level this will not be another Cascadia. Rather, we will look at some of things that came out of Cascadia last year and work on those issues, testing ourselves so we can improve. The stress to perform that existed with Cascadia will be removed and this should be much more relaxed and fun. Thanks again everyone for all you do.

Amateur Radio In The Community

Doing Good While Maintaining Emergency Readiness By Bruce Reiter, ARES Emergency Coordinator Yes, the widespread destruction of Fukushima, Japan by earthquake and tsunami has heightened concerns about the extensive infrastructure damage that Clallam County might suffer from a Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake. And much of the current emphasis of Amateur Radio is oriented to dealing with disaster. But on a happier note, Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES) operators also participate in many community-sponsored events throughout the County. Several distance races are held over terrain that is not conducive to cell phone coverage. Both the Olympic Adventure Trail Half Marathon and the Great Olympic Adventure Trail Marathon are held around the town of Joyce. ARES provides consistent effective radio communications coverage for both races, adding to the safety of race participants. The jewel of running in Clallam County is the North Olympic Discovery Marathon. This race proceeds from its start in Blyn, along the Olympic Discovery Trail to finish on the waterfront in Port Angeles. ARES members maintain a communications station at the Finish Line, and other members are stationed along the course at Aid and Water Stops. Their purpose is to provide information on lead runners’ locations to race authorities and to report any problems. For bicycle enthusiasts, ARES worked the first Northwest Duathlon last summer.

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Getting More From a GIS Display ByDavidHull,JustaGeekThis month we’ll look at: measuring distances and areas with TatukGIS Viewer, the coordinates display and copying coordinate data to the clipboard. TatukGIS viewer allows the user to measure both linear distances and the area within an inscribed space. The screen shot below shows the menu for measurements.

The right side arrow allows you to select different geometric shapes to use for your measurement. When a shape is created around some feature on you GIS display, the upper right window of the Viewer will show the perimeter distance and the area of the inscribed shape. Below are examples of the shapes and how they display once created. Creating a shape is merely a matter of selecting the menu option desired and then using the cursor to draw the shape. Once drawn the shape will be highlighted in blue.

A circular area, click center and drag out. This shape can be helpful to determine what is inside an evacuation radius, (think hazmat spill).

Arectangulararea,clickcorners.

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GIS Display Continued from page 3 A rotated rectangle, click corners.

An irregular polygon created by clicking along the boundary of a feature. A linear measurement, measuring the ridgeline length of a barn (lower right). Note linear measures don’t have areas.

In addition to measuring perimeter lengths and areas of inscribed shapes, TatukGIS also allows you to copy the location of any feature to the clipboard, for pasting into other applications.

Continued on page 5

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GIS Display Continued from page 4 Below is a screen shot showing the bottom of the viewing window in TatukGIS Viewer. This is where the cursor location displays in both (in this case) Latitude/Longitude and in the X/Y coordinate system Washington State Plane North (the property recording coordinate system used by Clallam County).

If the cursor is placed on a feature the coordinates of that feature will be displayed in this pane. If the right mouse button is clicked a menu appears, with options to past the coordinates to the clipboard. Note also that the current (zoom) scale of the map is shown to the left of the Lat/Lon (1:113000 in this view).

This covers some handy tools to extract more information from a GIS display.

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ARES Continued from page 2 This was a run-bike-run event, held west of Carlsborg. Amateur radio operators assisted participants by providing communications and a measure of traffic control. In addition to race events, ARES members regularly participate in community outreach gatherings. During Safety Fairs, at Sheriff’s displays at Home Shows and at the County Fair, we are active in promoting safety, emergency preparedness and Amateur Radio. Of special interest for HAM enthusiasts across the country, in June is the annual Amateur Radio Field Day. The public is invited to see radio in action, as HAMs set up their equipment and operate in portable mode, without permanent installations or electrical-grid power. This year Field Day will be held on the 24th and 25th at the Clallam County Fairgrounds in Port Angeles. Here sponsored by the Clallam County Amateur Radio Club, every year people are encouraged to learn about and participate in radio communications. Amateur Radio is about much more than being prepared for the next emergency or catastrophe. There’s something here for everyone.

Emergency Communications “3 Rules of 3"

By David Hull – Justa Geek The Third Rule: There are typically three modes of modern information transfer, they are Voice (Dispatch, ARES/HAM etc), text (cell text messaging, emails etc), and media (images, both static (picture, maps, etc), and dynamic (videos e.g. Skype). Each of these communication "modes" has its place in emergency communications. Each mode has advantages & limitations. It is imperative that the best "mode" be chosen for a particular communication requirement, and situational capability.

First, let’s consider voice communications. Voice communications are simple and effective. Their primary advantage lies in this simplicity. When infrastructure is impacted in a major disaster, the first communication that can be established is usually voice communication. This is because it

tends to be less dependent on infrastructure, and less is the key word. Modern voice communications, like dispatch, depend on repeaters and internet. While full dispatch capability depends heavily on infrastructure, limited dispatch capability (simplex voice) can quickly be established even after a major disaster. Simple simplex (non-repeater) operations require a minimal infrastructure, and that infrastructure can be as simple as several vehicles with radios. These simplex operations can be either public safety or ARES Ham operations. Typically the simplex voice “Nets” will be the first communications to come on line after a major disaster, and will be the only communications for some time. Some portable satellite systems, like our PCICS, may be deployed early for some critical communications “up chain,” but the vast majority of early communication will be voice. While voice communication is simple and survivable, it lacks some critical features. Voice communication does not automatically create a record of what was communicated, like text messaging (and email) does. Voice messages are much more susceptible to the “human factors” of familiarity, vocabulary and interpretation than are text messages. Continued on page 7

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3 Rules of 3 Continued from page 6 Text messages are accurate transcriptions the senders intend. They can be inaccurate, mis-transcribed or simply wrong, but they represent what the sender sent, not what the recipients thought they heard. Texts are reviewable at a later time, whereas voice messages vanish when the transmitter is unkeyed, unless recorded, as in the dispatch environment. While recording is common in normal dispatch, it is uncommon in emergency voice communication. As the time line of disaster moves so does the technology of communications. Voice gives way to self-documenting text and other media formats. As soon as adequate infrastructure exists to support self-documenting messaging, more and more message traffic moves to digital text and even image formats for their accuracy and ability to render complex graphical information unambiguously.

LOL! We’ve looked at the two most common emergency communication techniques, some of their strengths and some of their limitations. Next we’ll look at the most powerful but also the most demanding communications technique, streaming media. Most of us are familiar with streaming media in our everyday lives from services like Netfilx ,Skype and Facetime, but we don’t usually associate streaming media with emergency communications. Where sufficient infrastructure permits, usually requiring internet connectivity, streaming media can expedite coordinating complex requirements by the use of video conferencing. Streaming media can also graphically depict destruction and improve situational awareness for a group of geographically separated decision makers. During The Cascadia Rising Exercise of 2016, Geek Squad conducted a Skype video conference over the National Guard’s satellite station, to establish the viability of this capability. The National Guard also streamed aerial images to the ground to build situational awareness. While these capabilities can be valuable in emergency management, they are very resource intensive, and are often unavailable until well into the recovery phase of an emergency. Like all emergency communications management issues, the mode or technique used to communicate is always a trade off. Each of the aspects of the “3 Rules of 3” influences one another. Each choice comes with advantages and limitations. Some capabilities simply aren’t an option in specific situations. For these reasons the COML must always make choices about techniques, paths and resources to get the message traffic through. Without accurate real time information, good choices will be impossible.

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Creating Emergency Management Tools Kids May Hold The Answer

By Mike Becker

Finding time in most agencies for Emergency Management is difficult. Most agencies are understaffed and finding it difficult to even complete their regular day jobs. If any exercising is undertaken, it is for the routine jobs and immediate foreseeable needs. Exercising for potential disaster scenarios happens only when the agencies are forced to participate. Developing tools to support potential emergencies is low on the list of priorities. Some questions need to be asked. How do

tools get generated, especially tools that are targeted to Emergency Management? More basic questions are: how do I know what tools I may need, have I actually run

through potential scenarios and have I thought about what tools might make me more efficient in an emergency? This is important because the right tools might help me save my own family, the people I love the most. So what resources are available to create tools? How about the kids in our communities? Let’s start with the Boys and Girls Club of Sequim as an example. A science program and a robotics program have been implemented there. As an offshoot, a young lady (fourth grade) has been working on a science fair project to create a flare gun that uses LED lights.

The idea is that a regular flare gun would probably start a fire if used in the forest, an LED lighted flare would not. She attended her first Science Fair last April and took first in her division. We’re thinking of patenting the idea to be used to help fund her college education! How could an activity like this be used to create tools for Emergency Management? Let’s state a problem and see if we can find a solution. Problem statement: the internet is down, all communications are down, how do we communicate within an EOC and retain documentation to better manage the emergency? An idea Dave Hull and I have been working on is to put a local email server within the EOC so all communication goes through that email

server. If the internet is down all local emails can still be circulated within the EOC. All outgoing emails can be queued so when the internet comes up they can be

distributed to the outside world, and/or can be sent to the message center and distributed via HAM radio until the internet comes back up. The question becomes who will implement and test this idea? What about a high school student (or group of students) doing an Engineering Science Fair project? Dave and I have experimented with a very simple email server called “K-9 mail.” It works with most devices people carry and will easily run on a laptop. A student can develop and test a solution while being guided by Emergency Management and agency personnel. It’s a great opportunity to give the student invaluable

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Emergency Management Tools Continued from page 8 experience in engineering, while working on a “real world project.” One other benefit, the student begins to find out the agencies he or she is working with are staffed with not really bad people and might even spread the word within the school district. Another project we’ve been discussing at the Boys and Girls Club is starting a HAM radio club. First benefit, we have kids with HAM radio experience. Could we use them in an emergency to help in their local communities? What would happen if some of the kid’s parents took an interest? Maybe we could enlist more people with the ability to communicate in an emergency? Might their parents even become part of CERT? What if we got a club started at the high school level? Could these kids be of value in an emergency (using some common sense to keep them in a safer environment)? Might this be done in other communities besides just Sequim? Speaking of high schools, many of the students need to do community service to graduate. What about doing CERT as an activity at the high school to count toward community service hours? And what benefit would the community acquire if some of the kid’s parents joined CERT because their children are involved? What value would high school students bring to the community as they grow into adulthood with a value developed around community service, especially focused on Emergency Management? We have a tremendous resource available in our children to help develop tools, and people, for Emergency Management related activities. As a proposal can we develop ideas for tools (or involve the students to help come up with ideas) and find a way to make the development of these tools and resources a valuable experience for the students? It’s clearly a valuable teaching tool for schools and other student related agencies in the community. Of course, we need to focus on how we do this in a safe manner to protect the most valuable resource a community has.