THE PORTAL HUB - Pinzgauers, Haflingers, Volvo 303s and more!

A big (read very BIG) thanks to Expedition Imports, Goatwerks, this forum, and forum members for supporting our vehicles. Here is a shot of one of our vehicles doing radio work between a evacuation shelter and the EOC. Most of the time we are just having fun with these machines... And, sometimes, their build and our training can help people.

Thank you,
Robert

What kind of communications were you dealing with mostly? Is it mostly Red Cross related?

Short answer:
Connect to the Carlsbad EOC via 2m using the Palomar Mountain repeater at the top and bottom of the hour to echo any messages from the Shelter Director to EOC and viceversa.

Long answer:
The city of Carlsbad has its own EOC and trains all city employees on emergency and shelter management procedures. The program is fairly extensive and echos ARC/FEMA in regards to incident command structure and documentation. The city sponsors it’s own CERT team. Each year they open a class for 25 people. CERT 11 will start in Jan 2018.

During an incident six+ years ago the 800mhz system that CalFire/CarlsbadFire/Police/City uses, failed. There were a few HAMs in the CERT group that were able to deploy and assist communications. Since then, CERT Carlsbad has a subgroup of HAMs... CERT AuxComm. AuxComm has a desk next to the city fire dept in the EOC and deploys (when activated) to locations within the city to provide comm assistance (scribe/backup/primary).

AuxComm meets every Monday and works a 2m repeater on Palomar mtn. Then we flip to 2m simplex (in case the repeater ever dies), and then we hit a local repeater on 70cm. The nets are kinda fun/boring/geeky. Certain members (me in the Pinz) move about the city looking for the BEST simplex spot where we can hear everyone in the group.

While the acronym is awesome... except for the pretty cool backpack of CERT stuff (including green hard hat and stylish flourecent vest) this is all volunteer and re radio equipment we mostly provide our own.... especially for proofs of concept.

This particular incident affected the cities of Fallbrook, Oceanside, Bonsal. CalFire moved ~25,000 residents with mandatory evacuations. Carlsbad city opened a shelter to assist those cities and the overall relief effort that was being managed by SD OES. Red Cross opened a shelter at Palomar college. There was another shelter in the Oceanside highschool, don’t know who ran it.

The Carlsbad EOC activated CERT at 2:45 Thursday. The Stagecoach shelter opened less than 4 hours later at 6 pm. It was declared full around midnight. This shelter maxed out at 261 persons. Thats a lot of cots assembled, food served, rooms, tables, chairs, bathrooms cleaned. There was trailer delivered with more showers and bathrooms Friday morning. It was closed by Sunday mid day after all the evacuations were lifted.

This was the first time we ran "official" communications at Stagecoach Park. But we knew from our Monday night AuxComm nets that it was a challenging spot re RF. Kinda in a bowl surrounded by low hills. At no time was Carlsbad’s landlines/cell/power interrupted, AuxComm was activated as part of the relief operation. All we had to do was connect to the EOC AuxComm via 2m using the Palomar Mountain repeater at the top and bottom of the hour. The rest of the time we assisted the city staff with the shelter organization.

With the Pinz’s 30 ft pneumatic mast we we able to easily get RF out and in of the shelter. And prove that the handheld and mobile rigs could not get out reliably without the extra height. Part of the “lessons learned” docs include adding proper antennas to the shelter buildings for future use.

Very cool!