Amateur Radio Operators (ARES / RACES) as a Disaster Communications Force Multiplier

Why this matters for small departments

Big metro agencies have redundant trunked systems, fiber rings, mutual-aid microwave links, and a comm shop that can rebuild infrastructure in a weekend. A 28-member volunteer department covering 90 square miles does not have any of that. When your single repeater loses commercial power and the generator does not start, you have a problem that nobody in your duty roster can fix at 0230 on a Saturday.

Amateur radio operators are the closest thing to a free continuity-of-communications capability that exists. Licensed hams own their own equipment, train on their own time, and in many counties already maintain a working set of repeaters, HF nets, digital messaging networks, and emergency operations protocols. They want to help. A lot of them are retired military, retired telecom, retired public safety, or active IT professionals who got bored with mainstream tech.

The catch is that they are not employees, they are not sworn, and they cannot be ordered around. Getting value from ARES and RACES means setting up the relationship before the storm. Departments that try to recruit hams in the middle of a deployment get a polite handshake and not much else.

ARES, RACES, and AUXCOMM - what they actually are

Three acronyms get used almost interchangeably. They are not the same thing.

ARES - Amateur Radio Emergency Service

ARES is a volunteer program of the American Radio Relay League (ARRL). Any licensed amateur can join, regardless of license class. ARES units are organized by ARRL section and at the county level under a local Emergency Coordinator (EC). They serve any agency that requests communications support - Red Cross, hospitals, fire departments, emergency management, search and rescue teams. The agreement between ARES and an agency is typically a Memorandum of Understanding. ARES operators can serve under multiple agencies and the program runs on volunteer initiative. Program documentation lives at arrl.org/ares.

RACES - Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service

RACES is a separate program created under 47 CFR Part 97.407 and administered by local, county, or state emergency management. RACES operators are specifically enrolled with a civil-preparedness agency and activate only when that agency activates them - often under a declared emergency. The rules limit what RACES stations can transmit and they operate at the direction of the civil authority. In most counties the same hams who are in ARES are also enrolled in RACES; they wear whichever hat is needed at the moment.

AUXCOMM - Auxiliary Communications

AUXCOMM is the FEMA and DHS umbrella term and training program. It is not a membership organization. AUXCOMM is the formal recognition that auxiliary communicators - hams, but also unlicensed personnel operating under public-safety licenses - are a category of incident-support staff under NIMS. The DHS Office of Emergency Communications maintains AUXCOMM training (the AUXC course), position task books, and credentialing guidance. Details are published by CISA at cisa.gov/safecom/auxcomm.

If your county has an Emergency Coordinator (ARES) and an Emergency Manager (RACES), they are usually friends and often the same handful of people. Your first phone call is to the county EM, not to the ARRL website.

What hams can and cannot do for your department

Setting expectations honestly is the most important part of this whole conversation. Here is what amateur radio volunteers can realistically deliver to a small fire or EMS agency.

What they can do well

• Pass traffic between locations when your primary system is down. Shelter to EOC, EOC to hospital, command post to staging area. They are very good at this. Many counties run a weekly traffic net for exactly this practice.
• Provide health-and-welfare communications To families when phone systems are overloaded after a major event.
• Operate from sites you do not have staff for. Shelters, points of distribution, hospitals, donation centers, mass-care facilities. These places need a comm link but rarely warrant a sworn officer.
• Run digital messaging. Winlink (radio email over HF and VHF), packet, and APRS let them move structured data - patient counts, supply requests, ICS-213 forms - over radio when the internet is down. This is the most underused capability.
• Bring HF capability that public safety does not have. When the entire region's microwave backhaul is gone, HF works between counties and states with nothing but a wire antenna and a 100-watt radio.
• Provide skywarn and weather spotting Tied directly into the National Weather Service via existing ham networks.

What they cannot do

• Talk directly to your firefighters on your VHF / UHF / 700 / 800 MHz public safety radios. Amateur radio licenses (47 CFR Part 97) do not authorize transmissions on public safety frequencies, and your public safety license does not cover amateur bands. They will be on a parallel system, with a liaison at each end.
• Handle PHI or PII on amateur frequencies without care. Part 97 prohibits encryption to obscure meaning, so HIPAA-protected patient information cannot move in clear over amateur radio. They can pass counts, aggregate status, and operational requests - not patient identifiers.
• Be ordered to deploy. Even RACES activation depends on volunteer availability. Some will be available; some will be dealing with their own families and homes.
• Replace your dispatch. They augment, they do not dispatch. Tactical traffic stays on your system.

Integrating volunteers into your comms plan

The biggest mistake departments make is treating amateur radio as something that "the EOC handles." The chief who has never met the county Emergency Coordinator will not get useful comms support during an incident. Build the relationship in writing, in advance.

Step 1: Find your county Emergency Coordinator

Every ARRL section has a Section Emergency Coordinator (SEC), and most counties have a District Emergency Coordinator (DEC) or Emergency Coordinator (EC). The ARRL section website lists them. Your county Emergency Management office will also have a primary ham contact. Call them. Ask to attend the next ARES meeting. They usually meet monthly.

Step 2: Sign an MOU

The ARRL publishes a model Memorandum of Understanding for ARES units and served agencies. Adapt it to your department. Specifics to include:

• What capabilities the ARES group commits to provide (operators, equipment, training level)
• How activation works - who calls, what number, what authority the call requires
• Workers' compensation and liability coverage during activation
• Identification and access (will they get an ID badge, do they pass through your perimeter)
• Training expectations (NIMS IS-100, IS-200, IS-700, IS-800 are typical minimums)
• Equipment ownership - their gear stays theirs

Step 3: Write them into your continuity-of-communications plan

Your COMU planning should answer: if the primary repeater fails, what is the secondary? If both fail, what is tertiary? Amateur radio belongs in the tertiary or quaternary spot for most agencies. Spell out which net, which frequency, which liaison position, and which physical location at your EOC the ham operator works from. A folding table, a power strip, and a coax run to a roof-mounted antenna is enough. Do this once, leave it set up.

Step 4: Practice the handoff

Run at least one drill per year where your primary radio system is declared down and the ham liaison takes over passing traffic between your command post and your EOC. The first time you do this, it will be ugly. That is the point. The second time will be much better.

The legal and regulatory part nobody likes

Three regulatory frames affect how amateur volunteers work with you. Get them right once and never think about them again.

FCC Part 97 (47 CFR Part 97)

The rules governing amateur radio. Key points for served agencies:

• Section 97.403 allows any amateur station to provide essential communication needs of third parties during an emergency involving immediate safety of human life or protection of property.
• Section 97.407 defines RACES operations and what frequencies RACES stations can use during a war emergency declared by the President.
• Section 97.113 prohibits payment for transmitting messages and prohibits encryption to obscure meaning, with narrow exceptions.
• The agency cannot direct an amateur to transmit content that violates Part 97 - no business communications, no encrypted traffic, no broadcasts.

NIMS and ICS

Auxiliary communicators working at an incident operate under the Incident Command System. The COMU position structure (Communications Unit Leader, Communications Technician, Auxiliary Communicator) is defined in FEMA's NIMS guidance. Hams who have completed AUXC are typically credentialed to fill the AUXCOMM position under a COML. If you do not have a COML on your roster, the county or state usually does, and that person will integrate the hams into the incident.

Workers' comp, liability, and Good Samaritan coverage

This varies by state. Some states extend workers' compensation to RACES operators when activated by the civil authority. Some do not. Some have statutes providing Good Samaritan-style liability protection to registered emergency volunteers. Some do not. Your county attorney needs to confirm this in writing, and your MOU should reference whatever state statute applies. Do not assume coverage exists because somebody said so at a meeting.

Equipment, frequencies, and interop basics

You do not need to buy radios for your hams. They will bring their own. What you do need to provide is a place to operate, a way to get an antenna up, and a clear understanding of how their signal reaches your operation.

Bands and modes you will see

• VHF (2 meters, 144 to 148 MHz) and UHF (70 cm, 420 to 450 MHz) - local FM voice through repeaters. This is most of the day-to-day traffic.
• HF (3.5 to 29.7 MHz) - regional and long-haul voice and digital. The band that works when everything else is gone.
• Winlink - radio email over HF, VHF/UHF packet, or VARA. Sends ICS-213 General Message forms, spreadsheets, photos. This is the workhorse for moving structured data without internet.
• APRS - automatic position reporting plus short text messages. Useful for tracking unit locations during a long-duration shelter operation or wildfire support.
• DMR, D-STAR, System Fusion, M17 - amateur digital voice modes. Some groups standardize on one; do not assume universal interoperability between systems.

Antenna and power

An amateur operating from your EOC needs: a clear path to outside for coax (a window port or a pre-installed bulkhead), a roof or ground location for a temporary antenna, and a 15 amp outlet on a circuit you know is on generator backup. A $40 NMO mount on a pipe outside the building handles most VHF/UHF needs. HF requires more space - either a vertical antenna on a tripod or a wire dipole between two supports. Walk the building once with your local EC and figure out the antenna plan before you need it.

Liaison architecture

The ham does not talk to your firefighters. The ham talks to another ham. That ham is co-located with somebody who has a public safety radio. Information flows: firefighter on Part 90 system -> Liaison with both radios -> Ham on Part 97 system -> Distant ham -> Liaison at far end with Part 90 radio -> Destination. The arrangement is clunky but it is also bulletproof when nothing else works. The ARRL has done this for nearly a century.

Training and exercises that build real capability

The amateur radio community runs more exercises than most public safety agencies. You can plug into existing ones at almost no cost.

• SET (Simulated Emergency Test) - the ARRL's annual nationwide ARES exercise, typically the first weekend of October. Most ARES units participate. Ask your EC if your department can be a played agency.
• Field Day - the last full weekend of June. More of a contest than an exercise, but it gets hams setting up portable stations in field conditions for 24 hours. Visit one. The setup looks a lot like a comms unit on a deployment.
• Winlink Wednesdays - a weekly check-in on the Winlink digital network. Have your department EOC liaison send and receive an ICS-213 over Winlink once a month. Low cost, high payoff.
• County and state EOC exercises - if your county runs an annual full-scale exercise, request that auxiliary comms be played as an injected scenario. Loss of primary repeater is a realistic and common injection.

The training credentials that matter most for auxiliary communicators are: amateur license (the FCC issues these for free after a written test; Technician class is the entry level and covers most local work), NIMS IS-100, IS-200, IS-700, IS-800, and ideally IS-700 plus the FEMA AUXC course. Your county or state may also run a position task book for AUXCOMM under the NIMS resource typing structure.

Common mistakes departments make

1. Calling the ARES group during the incident instead of before it. Hams need time to deploy, set up antennas, and check in. A two-hour head start is the minimum.
2. No MOU. Verbal agreements work fine until somebody gets hurt or there is a dispute about equipment damage. Get it in writing.
3. Treating hams as gofers. They are licensed communications specialists, often with decades of experience. Assign them comms work, not parking duty.
4. Trying to direct them on tactical channels. They are on a parallel system. Use the liaison structure. Do not put a ham radio on your tactical talkgroup; it does not work that way.
5. Forgetting power and antenna access. The operator shows up and there is no outlet, no window port, and no permission to climb on the roof. Pre-stage this.
6. No periodic drills. Capability without exercise is theoretical. Run a yearly tabletop at minimum.
7. Assuming all hams are equal. Some operators have decades of public-service comms experience. Some got licensed last month. Ask the EC who is qualified for served-agency work.
8. Letting the relationship die when leadership changes. Chiefs retire, ECs step down, the new people do not know each other. Reintroduce the relationship every time either side has a leadership change.

Where to start this month

Five steps for a small department with no current amateur radio relationship:

1. Find your county Emergency Coordinator. Search "ARES" plus your ARRL section name. Or call your county Emergency Management office. They will know.
2. Invite the EC to your next staff meeting. Twenty minutes. Ask them what their group can do, what they need from your department, and who their qualified operators are.
3. Walk your station and your EOC with the EC. Identify antenna locations, coax paths, power outlets on generator backup, and a place for an operator to sit.
4. Draft an MOU from the ARRL template. Get it signed by your chief and the EC. Send a copy to county risk management.
5. Schedule one exercise in the next 12 months. Even a tabletop where you declare the repeater down for two hours and pass three messages through the ham liaison.

None of this costs money. The hams already have radios. Your department already has a meeting room. The infrastructure cost of building a working auxiliary communications relationship is the time it takes to drive across town and shake somebody's hand.

Further reading

• ARRL ARES program documentation - the official ARES manual and section-level resources.
• CISA AUXCOMM program page - FEMA and DHS guidance on auxiliary communications, including the AUXC course and position task book.
• FCC Amateur Radio Service - the regulatory page for Part 97.
• Winlink Global Radio Email - the digital messaging network most served agencies will encounter.

Final note

Amateur radio operators have been showing up for fire departments, sheriffs, hospitals, and emergency managers since before VHF repeaters existed. The capability is real and it is free. What it costs is the time to build the relationship before you need it. Find your county EC this month, get an MOU on paper this quarter, and run a drill this year. Three steps, twelve months, real continuity-of-communications capability where there was none before.