Before an Emergency (Preparation)

• Monthly "how-to" sessions are held at the Middletown Public Library the second Tuesday of each month 6PM-7:30PM.  Future meetings are scheduled for July 8,  and August 12, 2025.  (Please check library for weather-related closings). 

• <New> Regular repeater check-ins can promote radio familiarity and build good communications skills.

• <Changed> Thursday  Wednesday night check-ins -- at 730pm on Channel 3 -- along with ad-hoc communications can build a sense of connection between diverse communities across  Newport County, surrounding towns, and even towns in the West Bay (e.g. North Kingstown) that are hearing us.  

• Contacts made can foster discussions and collaboration on emergency preparedness and response best practices, for example organizing a community, building out disaster supplies and improving radio communications.

• Individuals or groups can help coordinate preparedness events such as an emergency exercise.

 During an Emergency (Response)

• 2-way radio traffic can be monitored  by residents (and emergency management officials) to better understand how a local disaster is unfolding and what is occurring where.  Having some situational awareness allows us to make better decisions. 

• Adjacent or nearby communities can warn of an immediate threat or if local evacuation routes are blocked.

• CodeRed-type announcements (e.g. to evacuate or shelter-in-place) may be relayed over 2-way radio.

• Priority (critical) messages may be able to be passed from individuals, Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT), or community groups to an appropriate Newport County public safety agency when normal communication paths are not working.  (The details of these processes are a work-in-progress). 

 After an Emergency (Recovery)

• Radio traffic can be monitored to better understand how the disaster has impacted the area.  Important observations -- related to FEMA's "Community Lifelines" -- can be shared with emergency managers. 

• Requests can be made to other CERT teams, volunteer groups, or communities for information, assistance, resources or equipment.

• Volunteers can be mobilized and coordinated to work on damage assessment, search and rescue, sheltering, cleanup and other disaster recovery tasks.

• Families can check-in with each other to help reunite.

During and after an emergency or major disaster, landline phone and/or cellular service may be overloaded or not operating due to damaged infrastructure.  For example,  2024's Hurricane Helene knocked 3,150 cell towers off-line due to loss of power and/or broken communication cables.  Should normal communications paths be disrupted, 2-way radio communications may be the best way to effectively get messages to and from individuals, CERT teams, community groups, and local authorities.

Use with Amateur Radio (Ham) Networks

Local and regional integration of amateur radio capabilities -- spanning long/medium-distance voice/digital to short-distance, high-bandwidth digital -is a work in progress across Rhode Island which has 1,000+ amateur radio licensees, many of whom also have a FCC GMRS license.  Several Rhode Island towns and cities have "ham" operators integrated within their emergency management agencies. (Locally, Portsmouth is a good example of such integration).

Gen4AI complements evolving amateur networks by providing a way for all individuals, CERT  teams and community groups to connect and assist each other without placing an additional burden on official emergency radio communications.

Neighborhood groups, CERT  teams, apartment residents and organizations can use FRS radios to communicate among individuals within a radius up to 0.5 miles. Since an increasing number of amateur radio operators are also GMRS users,  GMRS/FRS networks can connect individuals, CERT Teams and community groups with each other and with amateur radio networks.  

Note that in order to pass priority/critical messages to any town's Emergency Operations Center (EOC) or public safety dispatch,  processes will need to be established, exercised. and refined. During and after a disaster there is no guarantee that any radio operator can deliver a message to an EOC.  Also, if messages are passed to the EOC via amateur or gen4AI radios, there is no guarantee that first responders will be able to react to  them in a timely manner.