Rhode Island ARES®

The Amateur Radio Emergency Service® (ARES®) is a program established by ARRL: The National Association for Amateur Radio® to coordinate and train licensed amateurs who use their equipment and skills in service to the public. We are not first responders. We train to be able to provide situational awareness, auxiliary communications, and technical services in support of federal, state, regional and local government agencies and organizations, emergency management agencies, public safety agencies, Volunteer Organizations Active in Disaster (VOAD), community organizations and charitable organizations.

How does it work?

ARES and other amateur radio public service organizations often self activate to provide situational awareness and information sharing under many circumstances. The best example is SKYWARN, where a directed radio net is established for amateurs to report pertinent weather information directly to the Amateur Radio Coordinator for the local National Weather Service office in Boston/Norton during inclement or severe weather.

ARES groups are also often contacted by community groups that need auxiliary communications. Events like MS Ride the Rhode, Grills Trail Run, Surf-town Half Marathon, and the Boston Marathon all use volunteers who are part of ARES groups.

RI ARES is also working to establish relationships with the FEMA Region 1, RI Emergency Management Agency, and local Emergency Managers to provide situational awareness information that can be vital to managing emergencies and disasters, providing amateur radio infrastructure that provides redundancy and excess capacity for logistics, resources, information and health and welfare traffic. We are also working towards identifying amateur radio operators that can be trained as Auxiliary Communicators and Technical Specialists who are available to assist served agencies and other Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (VOAD).

When our assistance is needed we coordinate with the organization that needs assistance and determine how we can help, and put out a call to qualified participants to provide it. We may need to establish local radio nets on pre-planned frequencies to provide information by voice, coordinate data transmissions, or gather situational awareness information from amateur radio operators and community members via other radio services like GMRS, or even unlicensed radio technology like FRS, MURS or LoRa technologies like Meshtastic or LoRaWAN. We might also be called upon to provide data links via the RI Amateur Radio Emergency Data Network or transmit images using SSTV.

Seriously, these agencies want our help?

Yes, they do. Probably not on a daily basis though. Most public safety organizations are staffed to deal with the types of incidents they handle every day. The have robust, redundant commercial communications systems, interoperable communications plans, and many layers of mutual aid to provide additional capacity for large scale incidents. But sometimes a very large scale incident calls for assistance that amateur radio operators are capable of doing (with the proper training) which could help free up resources to do other important tasks and better deal with the incident. Particularly in rural areas of the state, amateur radio operators could play a vital role in helping emergency managers staff emergency operations centers assisting large scale incidents.

Amateur Radio also offers a myriad of quickly deployable solutions to unique problems that could very well be solved using commercial technology in the long term. Amateurs can provide a “right now” solution while resources are requested and deployed for a longer term fix. For example, we have the capability to use Winlink to send email over HF with no internet. A lot of emergency management agencies also have Winlink SHARES stations, but their staff may not be as familiar with it’s use as amateurs are, and also may not be able to troubleshoot equipment issues or make emergency antenna repairs that any experienced amateur would be able to easily complete.

Amateur radio operators can also easily gather situational awareness information (i.e. whether ATMs are operational, roads are flooded, or if gas stations are open), and report that back to the agencies who need that ground truth information to make informed, data driven decisions around what level of emergency exists and where emergency management resources need to be deployed.

Since we aren’t needed that often it is important that we continually train, practice, exercise, and improve our capabilities, so when we are called upon to help we can actually be useful.

Can’t I just show up?

No. No one should ever self deploy to an incident. Given the nature of these types of situations, if you were to show up without being properly assigned and documented you would likely be asked to leave, and you might even be detained.

If you are interested in being able to help, please complete the sign up form expressing interest in ARES. We will add you to our mailing list, connect you with training nets and meetings, teach you how to be useful, and provide information about local ARES groups you can work with too! Our goal is to provide opportunities for all amateurs to improve their operating skills and be able to provide assistance when and where it is needed.