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Santa Clara County ARES®/RACES

EOC Communications

EOC Communications Services

SCCo ARES/RACES provides a variety of communications capabilities for emergency managers in the SCCo Operational Area Emergency Operations Center (OA EOC) and local city EOCs.

Message Traffic

ARES/RACES stations in EOCs can send and receive messages for emergency managers. Both written and verbal messages can be exchanged between

  • our county OA EOC
  • our local city EOCs
  • other operational area EOCs
  • the Coastal Region EOC
  • the county Public Health Department Operations Center (PHDOC)
  • local hospitals and allied health facilities
  • utility companies and agencies like Valley Water
  • support organizations like the Red Cross and school districts
  • tactical field units like C-PODs, shelters, and CERT teams

ARES/RACES messages are handled with a workflow designed for emergency communications, including message numbering, logging, and tracking. ARES/RACES operators are trained on the specific ICS and emergency management forms used by our served agencies.

Situational Awareness
Emergency managers can obtain rapid situational awareness reports from ARES/RACES operators spread throughout the county and every city. These can include observed earthquake damage (Modified Mercali Scale), flooding locations and levels, communications outage locations, and more.
Resilient Email and Internet Access

EOCs with line of sight to one of the SCCo ARES/RACES backbone sites can establish a radio link to the SCCo ARES/RACES intranet. This provides:

  • A backup email service that isn’t dependent on regular Internet connections and external service providers.
  • Backup connections to the global Internet, in four widely-dispersed locations.
  • Less contention on the SCCo ARES/RACES packet net.

EOC Radio Rooms

To take advantage of these communications capabilities, each EOC has an associated radio room. The county OA EOC has a well equipped, regularly tested radio room staffed and maintained by SCCo ARES/RACES and county OEM staff. The radio room is equipped for:

  • Voice traffic over HF, VHF, and UHF amateur radio
  • Voice traffic over SHARES, Control-10, CESRS, CLERS, EOC-to-EOC, and OASIS non-amateur radio systems
  • Data traffic over VHF and UHF amateur radio (packet)
  • Data traffic over high-speed WiFi and Fiber

Each and agency EOC (or DOC) will need radio facilities as well. Here are recommendations for:

EOCs that are co-located with, or have line-of-sight access to, one of the SCCo ARES/RACES hub sites may also want to establish a direct connection to the SCCo ARES/RACES network:

For more information about services in city EOCs, contact the ARES emergency coordinator in your city.