ARES

Amateur Radio Emergency Service® (ARES)

If you have questions regarding joining ARES® you can contact our Section Emergency Coordinator (SEC) Bob Turner W6HRK. He will be glad to answer any questions that you might have. You may also view the Contact Us page for a listing of Emergency Coordinators and their contact information.

Click on Logo to Register

View Presentation on the Orange Section EOP

View the Incident Command System for On the Air Operations

ARES Mission Statement

ARES Strives to be an effective partner in emergency/disaster response, providing the citizenry and public service/safety partners with communications expertise, situational awareness, and capabilities of professional communicators.

ARES Vision Statement

ARES will be the premier amateur radio emergency communications service to the United States and its territories.

Our Expertise, Skills and Capability

Expertise

Amateur Radio operators (“hams”) possess unique skills. While a ham’s license allows the operation of radio equipment on a wide range of frequencies with varying propagation conditions, hams also are capable of setting up field stations and portable antennas and using non-conventional means of getting a message through when other systems are overloaded or have failed.
These skill sets are created and improved by the local ARES (Amateur Radio Emergency Service) group through thorough training  both formal and informal, and often in conjunction with local agencies where the team can meet agency personnel with whom they can expect to be operating during a true emergency. This advance effort is a strong contributor to developing mutual trust and understanding among the key individuals managing any emergency operation and should be exercised at every opportunity.

Skills and Capability

ARES groups have actively engaged in the following steps so that they have the ability to perform certain actions and meet their objectives. Further, a goal of the ARES program is to ensure that program participants continue to improve and develop additional capabilities for serving the public directly or in support of the needs of partners.

• Net operations and traffic passing provide experience in on-the-air operating, including net procedures and routines that are easily learned and adopted. Experience resulting from regular net participation ensures that established procedures and routines for net participation become rote practices for participants. The skills involved in copying transmissions subject to severe noise levels or interference come only through the actual experience of operating under severe conditions.

• Effective exercises offer scenarios to practice for hazards and threats. Having an established written policy relating to the most likely emergency scenarios allows ARES participants to understand the procedures for activating for a given situation. Severe weather events may be quite different from a wildfire, for example, requiring contact with different agencies and different skill sets from ARES participants. A well-written emergency communications plan greatly simplifies activation procedures and ensures that smaller items are not inadvertently overlooked.

• Emergency and disaster response provides experience with actual pressures and changing requirements found in such environments. Having the opportunity to participate in emergency or disaster response offers the ARES member valuable lessons and experiences. Therefore, it is important for those involved in the response to participate in the After-Action Reports (AAR) and debriefing process, so that all participants can learn from those who have operated in emergency conditions. Careful attention to details and retention of notes is an important part of completing this important educational task.

• The knowledge, understand and ability to operates various available field resources for communicating, such as VHF, UHF, HF, repeaters, accepted simplex frequencies, and local/regional HF networks as well as integrating messaging networks such as high-speed multimedia (HSMM) networks, the National Traffic System (NTS), and NTS-Digital (NTSD), along with new technology and data communications, and cross-training with other communications services is all highly valued.

• The ability to work with federal, state, local and tribal officials, participate in neighborhood programs, and cooperate or even be embedded with local CERT, National Weather Service SKYWARN, and similar programs, and assisting with community events, such as rallies, races, marathons, parades, all of which create training opportunities and team building when done so as a training exercise.

ARES® and Its Relationship with Message Traffic

The Amateur Radio Emergency Service® (ARES®) is chartered with providing emergency communications support. This support can take many forms, but it does by its very concept include the transmission of third-party messages for our partner organizations and the communities we serve.
This document provides a high-level perspective on ARES, which may be incorporated into any ARES operation, whether it is providing service in a disaster or at a community public service event. Training in both net operating and message formatting can be found in several well-regarded publications, including The Amateur Radio Public Service Handbook, first edition; The ARRL Operating Manual, eleventh edition; and The ARES Field Resource Manual. Additionally, The National Traffic System’s NTS Methods and Practices (http://www.arrl.org/files/file/NTS_MPG2014.pdf); and The NTS Manual (http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Public%20Service/NTS_Manual2015.pdf) are references for net and traffic handling procedures.

It is incumbent upon every Emergency Coordinator (EC) to develop a Standard Operating Guideline for his or her organization that includes clear liaison procedures for working with served partner agencies and regional traffic nets for fast and efficient handling of both tactical and strategic messages. The organization should utilize the Winlink system where appropriate. It should not limit itself to any specific messaging format or system but, instead, develop the operating skills and capacity to accommodate a wide variety of formats to meet ever-changing needs due to propagation, agency requirements, or technology.

Some things to keep in mind:
• ARES, as it is working with its partners, will need to handle messages and send those messages using partner-preferred forms (such as the ICS 213) in lieu of or in addition to NTS Radiograms.
• ARES will need to accept responsibility and be held accountable for timely delivery and tracking of messages which were sent on behalf of partners.
• ARES participants — as their skills (qualifications) improve via training and performing tasks —
need to be familiar with, and use, multiple digital communication protocols for messaging.
• ARES groups should invite NTS personnel to work with them as they assist with messaging for their Partners. However, the protocols used by ARES and its partners will necessarily take priority over other alternative systems.

Leadership

The leadership of the local ARES group should have a clear knowledge of local and regional traffic nets – especially Local, Section, and Region Nets of NTS. Knowing the schedules of these nets may allow rapid access to trained and ready outlets for urgent traffic. Further, knowledge of the organizational structure for these nets, especially the names, call signs, and contact information of the Net Managers, is extremely valuable in the event that a net needs to be activated outside of its normal schedule. Liaison, participation, and traffic handling with these nets are all vitally important to having an effective relationship and the ability to pass important traffic when it needs to happen.
The EC should examine the potential types of emergencies that may affect his or her communities and formulate a basic “Quick-Start” plan for each scenario. This plan should include each served partner agency, expected operating frequencies, how each will be utilized, what liaisons will be required, and how stations will be prioritized and assigned. The Quick-Start document can serve as a standard policy for consistent procedures when an activation occurs.