The July meeting of ARES of Champaign County was held Wednesday, July 5, 2006 at the Fire Service Institute.  Here are important notes from that meeting and other news.

ATTENDING
N9XDC, KC9HND, N9DN, KC9HXY, KC9LMM, KC9IHX, KC9IKL, WB9HFK, KB9KAI, KC9DSS, K9MLT, AB9FJ, W9DML, W9EML, W9ADS, KB9TIQ, N9XDH (17)


NEW WEB SITE
The new Champaign County ARES web site went live on July 10.  The redesigned and updated web site has information on Membership, Activities, Training, Emcomm links, and much more information.  In addition, there is a "Member's Only" area which contains the membership roster, net check-in list, scripts, and other CCARES documents. A login and password is required to access this portion of the web site.  Please contact me or Debbie, N9DN, by telephone or at the next ARES meeting to obtain a login and password.  We will not send these out via email nor give them out over the air, for security reasons.  Documents will be updated and posted to this portion of the web site as needed.

I will also start posting the net control stations for the weekly nets on the Nets page of the web site.


FEMA TRAINING
The main topic for our July meeting was FEMA training that is required by National Incident Management System Requirements. Under the requirements of this program, even volunteers, are required to have some basic training for NIMS.  The two courses required, as a minimum, for volunteers are FEMA IS-100: Introduction to the Incident Command System and FEMA IS-700: National Incident Management System (NIMS), An Introduction.  Two additional courses strongly recommended at this time are FEMA IS-200: Basic Incident Command and FEMA IS-800: National Response Plan (NRP), An Introduction.   These courses are available online at the FEMA Emergency Management Institute web site.. There is no charge to take the courses.  Under current regulations the first two courses must be completed by September 30, 2006. If they are not completed, you will not be allowed to work with Champaign County EMA as an ARES volunteer in an emergency or disaster response. This may also extend to working with the Red Cross in such disasters.

More information and links to the FEMA Emergency Management Institute can be found on the WA9RES web site.

When you complete any of the FEMA courses, you will need to send a copy of your course completion certificate to me so your training file can be updated and we have a record of your completion.


JULY NET CONTROL STATIONS
The weekly ARES net is held each Tuesday, 9:00 p.m., on the 444.100 repeater, CTSS 162.2.  An updated net check-in list is now available on the web site.

July 11         KC9DSS
July 18                  KC9IKL
July 25                  K9MLT
Aug 1                   W9DML


NEXT MEETING
The next regular meeting will be on Wednesday, August 2, 7:00 p.m. at the Fire Service Institute.