Equipment alone does not create an emergency communications capability.
A radio may provide the connection, but it is the operator who must understand what information is important, how to communicate it clearly, how to use the available equipment and how to continue operating when circumstances become difficult.
For REACT Team 6006, training is therefore an essential part of preparedness.
Our objective is to develop volunteers who are not merely familiar with equipment, but who can use their knowledge responsibly and effectively in service to their communities.
Training Is Part of Our Purpose
Training is not a new direction for Team 6006.
The Team's governing objectives recognize the importance of developing members through training in areas including radio communications, First Responder skills, safety, disaster management and shelter management.
Those objectives remain highly relevant today.
Communications technology and emergency-management practices continue to evolve, but the underlying requirement remains the same: volunteers must develop their abilities before those abilities are required during a real incident.
Team 6006 therefore encourages continuous learning, practical exercises and the sharing of knowledge between experienced and developing members.
Radio Communications
Radio communications remain one of REACT's fundamental capabilities.
Members should progressively develop an understanding of areas such as:
- radio operating procedures and communications discipline;
- VHF and UHF communications;
- simplex and repeater operation;
- antennas and basic radio propagation;
- portable and mobile communications;
- communications logging and message handling;
- equipment programming and configuration;
- emergency and public-service communications procedures.
Effective radio operation is about considerably more than pressing the push-to-talk button.
Operators must learn to listen before transmitting, keep messages concise, identify themselves correctly, understand the limitations of their equipment and avoid unnecessarily occupying a shared communications channel.
These habits become particularly important when communications traffic increases during an incident.
Emergency and Disaster Preparedness
Communications do not exist separately from the emergency they are supporting.
Members therefore benefit from understanding the wider environment in which emergency communications may be required.
Training and exercises may include emergency preparedness, disaster awareness, incident communications, basic shelter operations, field safety, communications planning and working alongside other organizations.
This helps volunteers understand not only how to communicate, but why particular information matters and where it needs to go.
First Aid, Safety and First Responder Skills
Team 6006's constitutional objectives also recognize First Responder and safety training.
Where appropriate training is available, members should be encouraged to develop recognized competencies in areas such as first aid, CPR/AED awareness, personal safety and basic emergency response.
REACT volunteers are not substitutes for doctors, paramedics, firefighters or other professional responders.
Training instead allows volunteers to operate more safely, recognize emergencies and provide appropriate assistance within the limits of their competence until professional help is available.
Knowing your limitations is itself an important emergency-response skill.
Learning Through Public Service
Some of the most valuable training does not happen in a classroom.
Community events, exercises and routine REACT activities allow members to practise communications under realistic conditions without the consequences associated with an actual disaster.
A public-service deployment quickly exposes practical problems.
A radio battery does not last as long as expected. A building blocks coverage. An antenna performs poorly. Two operators misunderstand one another. Somebody forgets an important piece of equipment.
Those failures are useful during training.
Every weakness discovered during an exercise is a weakness that can potentially be corrected before an emergency.
Developing Technical Capability
Modern emergency communications can involve considerably more than conventional analogue voice radio.
Team 6006 therefore also encourages technical experimentation and education where it can contribute to our mission.
Areas of interest may include amateur radio, digital radio systems, APRS and position reporting, software-defined radio, portable communications systems, alternative power, LoRa and resilient digital networking technologies.
Experimental technology, however, must be distinguished from operational capability.
Before Team 6006 depends upon any system during an emergency, it should be tested for reliability, coverage, power requirements, usability and maintainability.
Interesting technology is not automatically dependable technology.
Training Together
One of the greatest resources available to any volunteer organization is the experience of its members.
Experienced radio operators can teach communications. Technically skilled members can help others understand equipment. Members with medical, emergency-management, administrative, logistics or community-service experience can contribute knowledge from their own fields.
Training therefore should not always depend upon bringing in an outside instructor.
A healthy volunteer organization creates opportunities for members to teach one another.
At the same time, where formal certification or specialist knowledge is required, Team 6006 should seek appropriately qualified instructors and partner organizations.
Building Capability Over Time
Nobody joins REACT knowing everything.
Preparedness is developed progressively through education, practice, experience and repetition.
Team 6006 seeks to create an environment where members can begin with basic skills and gradually develop more advanced capabilities according to their interests and the needs of the Team.
The objective is not to create volunteers who know a little about everything.
It is to develop a team containing people with different, complementary competencies who know how to work together.
Because when an emergency occurs, the most important piece of equipment we deploy is not a radio.
It is a prepared operator.