Learning Unit 6 - Safety and Security Considerations

Objectives: Following completion of this Learning Unit, you will learn about personal safety.  You will also learn when to talk and when to listen.

Information:

I. Personal Safety Considerations

1.  Your Family:  Your primary job as an emergency responder is to secure your family before you deploy for an event.  You will not be an effective team member if your constantly worrying about the people you left at home.

2. You:  Each of us has heard the saying something to the effect: "Watch out for number one because no one else will." Be it a training exercise or an actual emergency your safety is up to you. This is your primary concern.  If you are injured during an event, vital resources will have to be re-tasked for your benefit taking away from the people we are there to help.

If at any time you are asked to handle an assignment that, for any reason, makes you uncomfortable, decline it. If your concern is with safety, let your group leader know why you declined.

Do not impede the work of professional responders such as fire fighters, police and emergency medical personnel. A "hot zone" is any area which presents known or unknown hazards, such as a hazardous material spill, lowered (or downed) electrical power lines, unauthorized people with weapons, etc. Stay out of the "hot zone" unless instructed. You don't want to endanger yourself and add yourself to the casualty list. Follow the directions of your lead operator or the chain of command. You may be requested to perform duties beyond just emergency communications; remain flexible to respond to the needs of the situation.

3. Your Team:  Your next priority is the safety of your team. There can easily be assignments such as ATV where the person with the camera will be very engrossed with ensuring the picture is the best possible and may not notice unsafe conditions. You, as the second person there, will need to be very careful about the safety of your team.  When working with electricity in less than optimum conditions double check your systems and grounds.  Take your time and do all dangerous tasks with forethought.

4. Your Mission:  Your mission can only be accomplished after your safety and the safety of your team is ensured. During that mission, if the safety of anyone becomes an issue, speak up. If necessary, notify your team leader, or appropriate party, within the ICS organization, and leave. The standing rule in fires is to always have two exits. Should one of them become unavailable, use the other one – IMMEDIATELY! If necessary leave your equipment. Equipment can be replaced; people can't.

Remember, an incident scene is not about radios and being a ham. It's about the incident. You will either be part of the problem or part of the solution. Keep your eyes open. Do your best to anticipate unsafe conditions before they happen.

II. Worker's Compensation Insurance

During the briefing for the event you are about to go out on there should be mention about worker's compensation insurance. If it is not mentioned, ask! Make sure you sign in and out with the government agency you are serving (when you arrive and when you leave) to be covered under its insurance.

Not every served agency will be able to provide you with worker's compensation insurance. If yours does not, feel free to decline the assignment, if the lack of insurance bothers you. If you are willing to participate without worker's compensation insurance that's fine but you must know in advance of going out, so you can make an informed decision.  Hall County ARES does NOT carry any type of workman’s comp or liability insurance.  Please be aware of this fact.

III. Security and privacy considerations

Who is the message intended for?

The message is for the intended recipient and the communication should remain private when possible. When handling the message, you should not reveal the existence or contents of the message, even after the operation. Let the receiving agency determine if they want to acknowledge the message publicly. It is the job of the Public Information Officer (PIO), or designated individual, to inform the media or public of any message content.

Who is listening? You do not know who is listening. It could be the general public. It could be the media. During a hectic operation, it is unlikely they could monitor and track the full range of messages in transit but realize that many people have scanners and hams outside the event could be listening.

The media may pick up on one message out of context and expand upon it, rather than having the full benefit of all the information at the Emergency Operating Centers. Distortions and misrepresentations could result by third party monitoring. Do not speculate! Be concerned with the passing of messages originated and signed (authorized). Log all messages, including the date/time of origin in case there is a need to verify the origin and timing of the message.

In the event you are questioned about the meaning of a message or to add additional information by anyone that is not a direct superior, refer them up the chain of command or to the PIO.  Do not be the one who gets in trouble for talking to the wrong person.

While many people have scanners, most of these people are unfamiliar with many of the digital modes available to amateur radio.  Part 97 of the FCC rules and regulations prohibits us from encrypting our messages but the likelihood of your average citizen or reporter to decode NBEMS, D-RATS, WinLink or other data modes is much less likely than eavesdropping on voice communications.  Whenever sending information that might best be kept “in-house”, try to use some form of accepted digital mode.

What you don't say:

To the extent possible, do not pass along codes, phone numbers or account numbers over the air that are considered unlisted or private. Examples such as unlisted phone numbers, credit card numbers, and control codes for repeaters should not be sent in the clear.  The Incident Commanders phone number doesn’t suddenly need to be available to every person with a radio.

If such codes or numbers are needed to fulfill an action, see if the message can be routed without the codes to a third person who has both the codes and regular (telephone) communication that can act on behalf of the affected party to complete the action. (For example, one method of completing a message would be to send the message to a relative who also has the unlisted telephone numbers to complete the calls.)

Once again, information like this would be best sent with digital modes if it is absolutely necessary to send.  Digital transmissions are often so short that unless someone is expecting the traffic and knows what mode to set their software for, it has come and gone before anything can be done with it.  Hall ARES uses several accepted modes and the ones for an event will be assigned and announced.  We may even work a rotation to keep eavesdroppers off balance.

Be Compassionate:

Be sensitive during times when fatalities may occur. If the operation involves the possibility of finding the remains of dead people, and there is a likelihood that relatives are listening at the receiving end or on scanners, do not refer to the need for additional resource people as "Need help. Send over more body bags." Hearing the word "bodies" under these circumstances could cause undue stress and worry to anyone hearing this. A better choice of words might be, "More workers are needed."

Using headphones when operating voice will help to avoid having others nearby casually listen in.  If using digital modes, try to keep your computers desktop from plain view of non essential personnel.  Make sure that written or printed messages follow the correct path, don’t hand off your message to be delivered by someone that might not need to know the information.

Personal Preparation:

In preparing ourselves to assist our served agencies in times of emergency, many people take a somewhat myopic view of that preparation. We look toward the equipment and some training. There is one other consideration we must make. Are we physically ready?  Our own safety and that of those around us depends on all facets of being ready for a call out.

For a lot of us, the equipment is a major contributor in the fun of Amateur Radio. To those that are not as technical as we would like to be, it is still a lot of fun to get new equipment (a.k.a. toys) and learn to use it properly. Equipment is but one third of the equation.

Training ourselves, not just to be able to operate the equipment, but to handle messages expeditiously and with minimal impact to our surroundings is also a challenge.  The item that many overlook is the physical conditioning that we really need to be able to handle the stress of emergency operations. Does that imply that each of us must be ready to run a marathon? Hardly!

But if we are unable to move efficiently around the command areas or if we have a heart attack in the middle of a call out, were we as prepared as we could have been?  There are a few simple guidelines we need to follow to be better prepared to physically support ARES operation.

Eat properly - this means eat the foods that will help keep us healthy.  The ARRL stated in a recent document that one of the biggest health concerns for hams is improper diet.

Minimum "junk" food. The "Mickey D" three basic food groups of sugar, salt and grease do not help our health.

Appropriate amounts of protein, vegetables and complex carbohydrates (this varies with the individual).

Drink a LOT of water. Most of us forget that the recommended minimum amount of water is 4oz. every hour (not coffee, not soda pop, etc). Very few people consume that much.

Moderate amount of alcohol (or none, if you prefer).  That is off the clock.  Drinking alcohol during an ARES operation will not be tolerated.  If we suspect that one of our operators is drinking they will be escorted away from the incident and asked to not return.

Get enough rest, Regularly! - Some people think that four hours of sleep will suffice. Most of us do better with six minimum and the really intelligent understand that seven and one half to eight is better yet.The other half of that equation is *regularly*. That means virtually every night. The occasional night with minimum sleep is not a problem, as long as it is occasional.

Exercise - Get regular exercise, appropriate in duration and type. Appropriate for someone twenty-five is probably not correct for some one sixty. A good source of reasonable exercise for all of us is to walk for at least thirty minutes each day.

Many will whine that there is "not enough time". If you are planning on being dead in six months or a year, I agree. Go for it. For the rest of us, take the time. Plan on a slow, steady, evolutionary change in how you make yourself ready to support the life style you have chosen. If you are physically active, properly rested and have eaten properly, you are better prepared for the stress of emergency operation.

Operator Stress:

Emergency communications is a very challenging assignment. There's a lot of need being placed on people in a short amount of time. For this reason, stress can build upon the operators. As these demands wear down the individual's capacity for tolerance, flexibility and creativity, the person shows signs of stress. People show it as varying levels of irritability and emotional outbursts, which affects the ability to work well with others. The best time to deal with stress is before it presents itself. Learn coping mechanisms before responding to an event.  Some of those mechanisms are:

Focus on teamwork, strategy and results, rather than on worry and concern.

Learn tolerance and patience during times of heightened demand and activity.

Understand that we are human and there are limits to our performance, both individually and corporately.

Learning the impact that diet, beverages and exercise can have on relieving stress and increase the capacity for dealing with it.

Learn to get rest and take breaks as necessary for you. What works for someone else may not work for you.

You may be exposed to experiences that are unique and unpleasant. A healthy person is able to withstand the emotional experience of high stress well enough until the impact of the immediate need passes, then begin processing the experience to accept the situation rather than reacting to it. Members of the team should learn to work with the stress rather than reacting to it.