bkdelong

I'm starting to get ready for this year's hurricane season. Though we're two months in with our first Hurricane being Ernesto, (currently passing over the western tip of Haiti as a Cat 1 storm and headed for eastern Cuba where it is expected to make landfall as a Cat 2 at 8am tomorrow morning).

I'm in limbo with regards to my ability to deploy to hurricane effected locations with Red Cross. Though I am a full-time consultant with HALO Worldwide, things haven't quite turned out the way we expected. I'm currently looking for full time work and hopefully my new employer will give me a better idea of options.

I spent last Tuesday making phone calls out of our Peabody office to all volunteers who were trained and signed up to deploy last season but did not. This year, Red Cross is putting 5,000 - 7,000 trained volunteers in reserve to deploy in 24hrs about 96 hrs before the landfall of a hurricane to the Gulf Coast. As you may remember, there are hundreds of thousands of people living in temporary shelter, trailers, or damaged housing - even Tropical Storm force winds can effect them so we're taking no chances.

I have set myself up as part of Materials Support Services group in the Red Cross DSHR system. This means, when they look at me for deployment, I am listed as eligible for the three following Response Technology activities: RT Communications, RT Computer Operations, and RT Networking. If those needs are fulfilled I can be deployed for any other number of activities I am trained for including Damage Assessment, ERV driving, or an EOC/Incident Command liaison.

At the moment, I'm monitoring the VoIP WX-Net on Echolink as well as the Hurricane Watch Net stream, which is currently looking for people in the effected areas. If it becomes active, I may try my hand as a Net Control Operator to give the others a break. For now it will give me an idea of what's going on.