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This is an official update to the Marion County ARES/ACS Standard Operating Procedures. The complete document is being revised to represent the changes to the EMCOMM environment.
Effective 1 JAN 2023, the following procedural change will be made to the Marion County ARES/ACS Standard Operating Procedure:
- In the event of an activation, it will be the policy of Marion County ARES to standup a “Resources and Information Net” on the K4GSO repeater. If the K4GSO repeater is inoperable or inconsistent, operations are to be moved to the KA4WJA (146.970) repeater, and the Emergency Coordinator is to be notified immediately of said movement.
- This net is to provide the general public and unaffiliated amateurs of the status of the current incident. The Net Control Operator (NCO) is expected to conduct (at minimum) a roll call every 30 minutes to ensure field operator safety and communications reliability.
- SKYWARN reports are to be taken on this frequency. It will be the responsibility of the NCO (or designee) to pass these messages along to the Marion County EOC via Winlink, or the NWS office in Jacksonville via 800 number.
- This frequency may be used by any member of any organization to contact a centralized location (for example, a CERT member may call in if they are having difficulty reaching their NCO). If the NCO receives traffic for the EOC on this frequency, it is their responsibility to relay that information as appropriate based on the precedence of the message.