Amateur Radio Emergency Services Program (ARES)

About the Program

Category: Risk and Emergency Management (Best in Category)

Year: 2015

Communications is one of the most important factors to response and recovery efforts before, during and after a disaster. Henrico County is fortunate to have a strong and secure primary radio system that has numerous redundancies to support the multitude of County agencies which rely on the resource. However, there is a need to have a redundancy backup; preferably one that is attainable at a minimal cost and includes the integration of trained and licensed volunteers. The Henrico County Amateur Radio Emergency Services (Henrico County ARES) program operates to minimize impact to emergency operations during the disaster response and recovery and to make citizen volunteers an integral part of the response and recovery efforts. Formally established in 2014, the Henrico County ARES program is a partnership between the Division of Fire’s Office of Emergency Management and the Virginia Capital District ARES. The initiative seeks to pair the knowledge and expertise of licensed amateur radio volunteers together with the resources available to provide an additional radio communications system used in disaster situations (outside of existing backups). This system is completely mobile and is able to provide important decision making information to the County’s Emergency Operations Center.