K6MEC's Emergency Radio Commando page

What is an Emergency Radio Commando?

Recently hurricane Katrina blew through the Gulf coast and wrought absolute havok and destruction throughout Lousiana, Florida and Mississippi (to name the major areas). One of the things I heard was how the lack of communication slowed response times and was probably a contributing factor to the many deaths.

Of course, what you usually don't hear early in the stages of any emergency/disaster is that the Amateur Radio community is out there contributing to local EOCs through ARES, RACES and other ES groups. With that proud heritage in mind, I began looking at my involvement with the hobby, and did an honest inventory of my readiness. I determined there was a lot more I could do to be ready to help in the next disaster. To that end, I spent lunch one day thinking about solutions. This is where I came up with the Emergency Radio Commando idea!

Emergency Radio Commando vision

the ERC is an idea that I came up with based on three major tenets: Communication, Survival and Emergency Service. The communication tenet of course comes from the Amateur Radio service. As Hams, we strive to know the art as well as we can. Hams excel at communications in many ways, whether it's pulling that elusive contact out of the noise to nab a rare DX contact, building equipment that evolves the state of the art or garnering the best score at Field Day. Most importantly, Amateur Radio has always been associated with selfless public service. Therefore one could say the Amateur Radio service is the cornerstone of this idea.

Secondly, survival is a major tenet. When I was first envisiong the idea of an Emergency Radio Commando, I wanted to establish what the primary objective would be for such a title. Having spent 17 years in the Army, the idea of combining an expert communicator with the ability to operate independently for an extended period seemed a perfect fit. The whole notion soon became very much akin to the Army's LRRPs, or Long-Range Recon Patrol soldier. He's dropped behind enemy lines carrying all he needs to exist and carry out the mission. To that end I established as a ground rule that ERCs would not only carry radio gear to operate in disaster areas, but be self-sustaining for up to 7 days using only what each communicator hauls on his/her back. In this way, the IC could call on teams of ERCs to be dropped into the heart of a disaster area to immediately provide dependable, sustainable emergency communications from the outset of a disaster.

Of course, this is a grand notion, and I wouldn't be that surprised at all if this exact sort of thing doesn't already exist within the government or other professional groups. The difference, though, is that I want to create the role of the Emergency Radio Commando for the regular old private citizen-communicator. Not so much as a secret group of super-Hams that leap off of the couch and into harm's way at a moment's notice, but more as a guideline of what each of us can do to provide the ultimate in emergency assistance. In other words, how to best ue our hobby coupled with some additional skillsets in a way that will prevent us from becoming casualties ourselves, while providing quality communication that supports the ES mission.

Required skills for the ERC

Operational requirements