What Is A Message?
Historical Context for
Emergency Communications

by Robert Osband, N4SCY
Titusville Amateur Radio Club

As the announcer on The Lone Ranger would say, "Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear". In those days, the sound of "news from afar" was the sound of the telegraph sounder in the Western Union office in the back of the railroad station. "Messages" came off a yellow tape printing machine, and pasted onto a yellow message form, and when a "Message" was ready for delivery, it was handed off to a messenger boy in a distinctive envelope to run over to the Sherrif, or the Widow Jones. In those days, you knew what a message was, and it came on a sheet of paper.

In the Modern Era, most people don't remember Telegrams. The Western Union Telegraph Company is only a shell of it's former self, concerning itself only with the Money Order business. People just don't remember what a "Message" was. The Mirriam-Webster Dictionary has this to say on the subject:
    Message_/1
  1. a communication in writing, in speech, or by signals
  2. a messenger's mission
  3. an underlying theme or idea
In an emergency, when the communications infrastructure breaks down, Ham Radio operators play an important part in sending messages from Red Cross Shelters and Food Distribution Points back to Emergency Managers in the EOC (Emergency Operations Center). Unfortunately, those managers sitting at their ESF (Emergency Service Function) Desks don't understand the the history of Message Handling that stands behind ICS Form 213_/2.

The Incident Command System (ICS) is a wonderful management tool for standardizing the way emergencies are managed, and mitigated. It has been formalized by the Federal Government, and FEMA provides courses that are available to anyone over the Internet_/3. In fact, Emergency Managers run the risk of not being reimburssed by FEMA for disaster related expenses if they do not use the Incident Command System, and ICS Forms to manager their emergency. And have FEMA Course Trained personnel - including volunteers! Among those volunteers, are the ham radio operators

In Brevard County, Florida, I am proud to say that our Ham Radio community has stepped up to the plate. As the longest county in Florida, it has three distinct regions (North, Central, and South), three major ham radio clubs, and other small radio clubs more often described as "social dining clubs with a radio problem". When County Emergency Manager Bob Lay requested a single Point Of contact when he needed Ham Radio assistance, BEARS was born. The Brevard Emergency Amateur Radio Service (now with "Inc" tacked on the name) has a 501(C)(3) letter from the IRS to boot. The organization is a consortium of the county's radio clubs, and also includes non-ham associations, REACT (Radio Emergency Associated Communication Teams (the old "CB" Club that now uses GMRS radios as well), and MARS, (Military Affiliated Radio Service).

One thing that became very apparent during the Hurricane Andrew recovery_/4, was that messages would go into the EOC, be passed across from ESF 2 (Communications) to the Emergency Service Function desk that was the recipient, that agency would then send a message down their own chain-of-command to verify something, and then send people out to handle the problem. They did not understand the concept that this was a message that had been authenticated at it's origin, as message handlers are trained to do.

This may be because the message center was using mere scraps of paper to hand the messages in from the radio shack to "The Pit". This was in the days before ICS, after all. Today these messages would go to the Emergency Managers on "Form ICS-213, General Message Form".

There are a host of ISC Forms that are useful to Emergency Managers, and they should be used in every drill, so that when an emergency comes, the people that must manage them, and mitigate the aftermath, will be prepared, and know how to handle things. Including the paperwork. And they should know that when a message comes in on Form 213, it's as if that "signature" on the bottom was done in pen and ink by their correspondent miles away at the scene.

Hams should not only use the ICS Forms for their Field Day contest (Form 205 Communications Plan, Form 217 Radio Frequency Assignment Worksheet, and Form 309 Communications Log, among others), they should set up their Field Day as an ICS Incident! Field Day is, in and of itself, an Emergency Preparedness exercise. I maintain to this day that much of what I did in Homestead FL after Hurricane Andrew, I learned how to do at Field Day (plus, I came up with a few operating tricks there that I now use on Field Day).

The Incident Command System, and it's associated bureaucracy is with us to stay. We need to start learning how to use it to our advantage, and be aware of how the component parts (such as Messages) help speed the mitigation of the event. We do that with Training, and the proper forms.

Footnotes

1 http://m-w.com/dictionary/message, the Mirriam Webster Co of Springfield MA.

2 http://www.k4eoc.org/files/ics_forms/ics213.pdf General Message Form
  http://www.k4eoc.org/files/ics_forms/ List of ICS Forms in PDF format.

3 http://www.K4EOC.Org/training
  http://training.fema.gov/IS/crslist.asp

4 http://Spaceyideas.com/ozzie/andrew.html, Hurricane Andrew Report, by Robert Osband-N4SCY



Robert Osband, better known to one and all as "Ozzie", got his ham radio license in 1988 after learning that data could be transmitted over radio - if you had a license. He has been a "communications hobbyist" (phone phreak) for decades, and tells people that he has his very own Area Code (http://321Liftoff.Net).



Copies of this paper may be printed out from http://www.K4EOC.Org/files/message.html