What are the volunteers doing right now in PR ? Here's Mike and Valerie's report from doe range. Please hold as board family confidential. Do not share. Thanks Tom Sent from my iPhone This information is not to be distributed, update is for our information only. I just spoke with Valerie Hotzfeld, NV9L. She gave me a rundown of the situation in San Juan. * Currently they are at the convention center, which is serving as Puerto Rico Emergency Management (PREMA) headquarters, awaiting an operations briefing. Last night they were provided accommodations at a local church and slept on pews that had been pushed together. Tonight they will likely be given cots. * They have been assigned four missions: * Set up a 40/80 meter station at Telemundo, that has been accomplished and they are operating from there passing outbound traffic (likely on CEWN and Winlink) * Twelve of them will be assigned to distribution centers tasked with providing communications back to Red Cross HQ in San Juan and to assist municipal mayors with communications. * There are 18 tech plazas where engineers are staging to begin repair power distribution centers. Twelve team members will be assigned to provide communications for the engineers in charge. * Communications between the central emergency operations center and the American Red Cross HQ in San Juan. * They are also dealing with admin duties, operations meetings, and media issues. They know to clear any media request with ARRL HQ before being interviewed. Valerie is the only one doing interviews and has been working with me on those. * Two team members will be assigned to Culebra to work with local emergency management. I’m not sure how they got assigned outside of the Red Cross system. Working on finding that out now. * Two team members will be assigned to central operations. Needs Valerie identified two unmet needs the team is facing. * They need eight more from our list of volunteers. I will work on this with American Red Cross when I talk to them tomorrow. * They need 40 dual band mobile radios. These are for the police cars. The total need is 50, however we already have ten set aside for them. If additional volunteers deploy we can send the radios with them. Valerie will call me again tomorrow afternoon with an update. From the sounds of it the team is doing well, but could probably use some good rest. Based on all she told me the Amateurs are doing a tremendous job, the team and the local hams. Mike Corey, KI1U Emergency Preparedness Manager ARRL, the national association for Amateur Radio 225 Main St. Newington, CT 06111 Telephone – 860-594-0222 Fax – 860-594-0259 Twitter – www.twitter.com/arrl_ares<http://www.twitter.com/arrl_ares>