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T he C olumbia P ress
January 24, 2020
Prepared: County
making progress
Continued from Page 1
(an organization that provides am-
ateur radio and public service com-
munications), the Coast Guard, the
sheriff’s office and other emergency
providers got involved.
And Clatsop County became the
first place where the Navy was able
to achieve ship-to-shore commu-
nications with local government
during the emergency drills, Brown
said.
She got emotional talking about
it during an appreciation event for
ham radio operators earlier this
month.
“It’s amazing when you see such a
magnificent effort come from such a
humble, unsuspecting source,” she
said.
The idea of ensuring all parties can
communicate in an emergency was
hammered home while touring the
U.S.S. Portland when it docked for
the Rose Festival, Brown said. When
the group got to the communica-
tions room, the tour leader asked
about Clatsop County’s equipment
and was surprised by how broad-
based the county’s equipment is.
“In that moment, it occurred to
me and I made them stop the tour.
I said, ‘Wait. This is where it all goes
wrong,’ ” Brown said. “We fall into
this tacit assumption that because
we’re both well-geared with commu-
nications equipment we can com-
municate with each other. But we
have to do it ahead of time.”
Radios need to be programmed,
frequencies established, protocols
maintained, acitivities documented.
Last spring, local hams helped
erect a dipole antenna system, sig-
nificantly extending radio communi-
cations ability from the tower at the
Emergency Operations Center.
The Navy has scoured Oregon’s
coast looking for other landing sites.
While working with Lincoln and Til-
lamook counties in November, lo-
cal authorities there called Clatsop
County EMD after hearing about its
success with communications.
In September, during a full-scale
emergency exercise in San Francis-
co, the Navy called Clatsop Coun-
ty again to get written information
EMD had earlier developed to facili-
tate interagency communication.