One important contention of mine comes to mind. That's the vulnerability and limitations of the 911 system. When I ask, "how do we get help when the big one hits?", the answer is always, "dial 911".

As you have just illustrated, that may not work. Furthermore, even if it does, I contend that 911 access and access to resources may quickly be saturated and ineffective. This rings of "best effort" again. Legislators might admit we can't afford a perfect system (or maybe even an excellent or very good one?). As the currently common (I hate it) reply goes, "it is what it is."

Worse yet, when access to resources is limited, who gets them?  I leave it to your imagination how this would play out but I contend that individual citizens are on the bottom of the list.

I recognize and applaud CERT for what they are doing to prepare citizens. They are an important part of the solution but they don't address the communication that is necessary.  I know they're working to improve in this area and we ought to assist them in this regard.

Consider ham radio as a partial solution... 

I want to preface this by saying that I believe that ARES is a valuable resource. ARES is well established but it relies solely on 911 for community (citizen) input. It is my understanding that there is no plan in place for citizens to contact emergency services through ARES. ARES is subservient to the government and the 911 system. I believe that ARES could be structured to better serve the citizens of the community, but it is what it is.  I welcome any changes that would make the ARES structure serve citizens better.

And then there's SBARC... SBARC has incredible potential to serve the citizens of the community and we're already part way there. We need to stop relying solely on ARES for amateur radio emergency services. We need to help more citizens become "active" radio amateurs. How about at least one per city block? We need to establish an end to end plan with real redundancy to connect citizens to services they need, even when conventional means don't work. This would use a diversity of communication types and paths, not only ham radio.  I think several of us have good ideas how we can make this work well and I know it is needed and would be oh so valuable when the big one hits.

Details are beyond the scope of this email but I propose an SBARC Emergency Service committee to make it happen.

As an SBARC Board member, I will attempt to establish this committee.  Which of you would like to participate?

73,

Rod Fritz, WB9KMO