State OES, California, has developed Auxiliary Communications Service (ACS) Field Teams to assist in the deployment of OES assets. These include it¹s trailer-mounted transportable earth stations and Mobile Communications Units (Comm Vans).

The genesis for the field teams occurred in the early l990's when a volunteer obtained and donated a used TV crew truck to State OES. He and several other volunteers prepared it for microwave and telephone. One memorable use of that Comm Van was the Oakland Fire Storm which burned out the phone lines. The field team put the Comm Van on the hills, made a line-of-sight microwave link to the Oakland-Bay Bridge Toll Plaza. There the received microwave signal was connected to the telephone system. That provided access to telephone lines at the Command Post for the Incident Commander.

Series Recap, Credits, Acknowledgements and Thanks 

As we close this series, here is a recap of the topics:

EMC366 Book 1 - Index, Organization and Volunteer Rights
EMC367 Book 2 - Responsibilities of an organizational volunteer
EMC368 Book 3 - Unit Senior Officer responsibilities
EMC369 Book 4 - Organizational management responsibilities
EMC370 Book 5 - Organizational and personnel management
EMC371 Book 6 - Training is most important for emergency comm.

APPENDIX 

CALL-UP LIST

(Use a current call-up list or tree here)

PRIMARY AND ALTERNATE FREQUENCIES
The primary and alternate frequencies will almost always remain the same. If there is a change everyone will be notified. The use of repeaters will have to be cleared with the owner(s), trustee(s) or control operators(s) ahead of time. This will need to be reconfirmed immediately before use by the Unit Leader or the alternate.  

AMATEUR RADIO EMERGENCY SERVICES AND H&W TRAFFIC 

Generally ACS and RACES organizations will not handle H&W traffic. This is best left up to Amateur Radio Emergency Services (ARES) who are the H&W experts. There will be times when an ACS or RACES organization will be approached and asked to handle H&W traffic.

Its recommended that the EMCOMM Officer provide information to the requesting agency (Red Cross etc...) so that they may make the initial contact with ARES. However, if the EMCOMM Officer is authorized by the sponsoring agency, or the situation (limited or no telephone service etc...) requires them to make the initial contact with ARES, then insure the following steps are followed: