FCC May Revise Rules Concerning Disruption to Comms During Disasters

I happen to have an old squid buddy whose son is in the cajun navy. I was told the issue was the hams running the show started out with what they could not do and not to use radios until they were licensed and cleared by homeland security. Now being true rednecks they are not about to cowtow to authority lovers and they rejected having to be investigated by homeland security be able to rescue their neighbor's.
Seems to me the Emcomm hams blew it big time on this one as usual.
Now there are some hams who come out to assist the Cajun navy and they have a club down there but they are not associated with the usual suspect's and for good reason. Might be time for some to rethink things and stop trying to control the situation and instead work with what they have. Of course that will never happen in ego driven emcomm land.

Funny how he said they did have good comms and handled their end just fine but your statement just wants to put them down like they are idiots. I would think the people who were rescued would say otherwise.

I think a lot of us here would not want any tie in with EOC after having experienced them before.

 

That's right George, Winter is Coming! I was a first responder in SE Florida for 20+ years. Now that I'm retired, I'd be happy to help, if needed. I think all of us would pitch in, if needed. Your comment about helping neighbors is 100% correct. Community service is about your family, your neighbors, and your community, and if needed, places and people outside of your community.

Apparently, W5CNR is one ham among several who have joined up with Cajun Navy Relief. Hopefully, he can comment on the abilities of CNR in the comms department (they incorporate weather and local and federal government emergency messages in their very active and publicly accessible Twitter, Facebook, and Zello feeds, and they use Glympse as a GPS locator, as well as GMRS repeaters, FRS, CB radio, and ham radio. Affected PSAPs could take a page from their book, as FCC suggested. Those tools were very effective during IDA, for all kinds of emcomm traffic.

https://www.cajunnavyrelief.com/W5CNR/ << Nice page

https://coffeeordie.com/cajun-navy-ida-relief/ << Good pics of the IDA aftermath

 

Let me say, OM, I don't believe any of those things. I'm just stating a popular Zed trope.

 

Need more money for doughnuts and Bengay.

 

Alrighty then. Cool. But...maybe I'm not understanding you, OM. How do you suppose recruiting more hams to serve in shelters and EOCs will allow EMAs to gain more money for...uh...Bengay (!) and donuts. I'm sure there must be logic there...must just be going way over MY head.

 

no truer words have been spoken!!!!

 

As expected:

For Immediate Release

FCC LAUNCHES RULEMAKING TO IMPROVE COMMUNICATIONS RELIABILITY DURING DISASTERS
--
WASHINGTON, September 30, 2021—The Federal Communications Commission today launched a rulemaking proceeding to improve the reliability of communications networks and help ensure that the public can communicate when disasters strike.

Recent hurricanes, wildfires, earthquakes, and ice storms demonstrate that America’s communications infrastructure remains susceptible to disruption during disasters. Disaster recovery efforts in the wireless industry are currently supported by the Wireless Network Resiliency Cooperative Framework, a voluntary industry agreement to promote resilient communications and situational awareness during disasters through roaming agreements, mutual aid, and other measures.

The Commission today adopted a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that seeks comment on potential improvements to the Framework, including evaluating what triggers its activation, its scope of participants, whether existing Framework elements can be strengthened, any gaps that need to be addressed, and whether the public would benefit from codifying some or all of the Framework in the Commission’s rules.

As part of its own network resiliency efforts, the Commission monitors communications outage data submitted to its mandatory Network Outage Reporting System (NORS) and voluntary Disaster Information Reporting System (DIRS). The Commission uses this information to provide critical situational awareness during outages and analyze outage trends. Today’s action seeks comment on ways to enhance the information supplied through these systems by communications providers, including how to encourage greater participation in DIRS and whether broadband service outages should be reported in NORS.

Last, because commercial power outages are a significant cause of communications network outages after disasters, today’s action seeks comment on improving backup power availability at key communications sites, enhancing coordination between communications providers and power companies, and other measures to reduce power-related disruptions to communications services.

Action by the Commission September 30, 2021 by Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (FCC 21-99). Acting Chairwoman Rosenworcel, Commissioners Carr, Starks, and Simington approving and issuing separate statements.

PS Docket Nos. 21-346, 15-80; ET Docket No. 04-35

###


Media Contact: Rochelle Cohen
rochelle.cohen@fcc.gov

Unofficial announcement of Commission action. Release of the full text of a Commission order constitutes official action. See MCI v. FCC, 515 F.2d 385 (D.C. Cir. 1974).

https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-acts-improve-communications-reliability-during-disasters

 

Not official ham emcomm so therefore it sucks? I've heard the discussion before and tuned out when when the ARES guys started the same bashing instead of maybe learning something. With apologies to the Aviation Ordnance rate,
IYAYAS (Substitute ARES for the first "A" and you've got the attitude problem in a nutshell)

Edit: forgot the original acronym IYAOYAS........Ordies are cool

 

There may be EMAs that want more but that's not a universal truth for everywhere. There are certainly a large number of EMAs that do not.

 

We used to laugh at the ordies thinking they were cool yelling IYAOYAS to the rest of the aviation community. We always said, "If You Are Ordnance Your ASVAB sucked."

 

There are many areas of the country where a "disaster" is sister Sally's cat up a tree.

 

Now there ya went and done it, ya done gone made me giggle.

73
--KD7YVV

 

Long ago and far away........good times. Score high or stack "BB'S"

Me? Just another "Tweet" and sometimes plane captain when called to play on the "roof".

 

Thanks, Tom, for creating this thread. Sorry that I didn't prepare a response to address the FCC's initiative. I probably will Comment, as one of the most serious and frequent failures has been first responder radio systems. The sad reality is, that the FCC and Mother /\/\ sold hapless agencies on use of 700MHz trunked systems and away from conventional analog or digital mobile relay systems. Multiple, stand-alone repeaters are much more reliable and loss of individual repeaters does not mean an end to coverage. Whereas, in the case of trunked systems, the loss of the trunking controller, whether due to power failure, system or signal failure, all dispatch and useful relay is lost. Hurricane Katrina took out NO's entire trunked system due to a generator failure that killed the controller.

You probably know this, as many do in law enforcement that have experienced trunking failures, but the experiences fall on deaf ears at the FCC. Although, I did hear that Dallas, TX police, after trying to deal with dead spots of their trunked system, reverted back to a multi-repeater 450MHz conventional system.

Here in Central Alabama, where our county's fire services migrated to a county wide trunked system about two years ago, they're not happy. I happened to watch a TV news segment where one of the city fire chiefs complain of multiple dead spots with the new multimillion dollar trunked system. The Commission needs to hear such stuff. Pushing agencies away from multiple VHF/UHF repeater systems makes for less robust coverage and huge expenditures that could have been better spent on life saving apparatus.

The most likely reason for backup power failure(s), from years of experience with emergency power gen sets, isn't failure to start up, but failure of the transfer switches to properly operate so the generators will pick up load. Public safety radio sorely needs redundancy in emergency power. More than just one level. At this point in history, batteries have high enough energy density to be used for that purpose. Something like 24 hours worth of first level battery backup, after which time a generator starts and runs. Fuel choice for gensets can be an issue as well. Even Diesel goes bad over considerable time. And, radios and power equipment need to be at least 10 feet above 100 year flood plain water levels...or in waterproof enclosures capable of submersion. Hard to put gensets in such enlosures....