Posted: 5/12/2011 7:33:34 PM EDT
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I'm scheduled to take the course beginning Monday morning. 5 day class. Should prove interesting. I already have all the pre-requsite ICS certificates. Anybody been through this class? Incident Communications Technician. http://www.nwcg.gov/pms/taskbook/logistics/pms-311-96.pdf Communications Technician (COMT) Training Courses
The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Office of Emergency Communications (OEC) has completed the development of the All-Hazards Communications Technician (COMT) curriculum. This curriculum trains emergency responders on practices and procedures common to radio communication technicians during all-hazards emergency operations and will help communications technicians to work within the Incident Command System (ICS) organizational structure with standardized operational and technical procedures. The COMT class is targeted for all local, regional, state and federal cross disciplinary emergency response professionals and coordination/support personnel with a communications background. Individuals who are assigned responsibility for a Strategic Technology Reserve (radio cache, mobile communications vehicle, or other deployable communications assets) are encouraged to attend. This class is targeted to students who have technical aptitude, but not necessarily strong technical experience. Students should leave the class with a strong foundational knowledge of incident communications processes and systems, and some basic skills. Field experience in preparation to deploy as a single resource will be gained by the student after returning to his/her home agency during the Position Task Book process. |
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This is a "position" specific course, within the NIMS/ICS framework. The National Wildland Coordinating Group (NWCG) is one of the lead agencies involved with Wildland Fire response....along with other federal groups and each state forest service. In Texas, the Texas Forest Service (TFS) has the lead for wildland response and coordination.........and as we all know, they are having a busy year.
TFS and other state agencies.....DPS, TEEX, Nat Guard, etc....all use the "position specific" functions, within our NIMS / ICS structure. The NWCG commo tech class is geared toward wildland response........but it is very good at covering functions, forms, task assignment, logs, and documentation. As we all know..... a good commo plan is a must for an incident to go well.....!!! Let us know how it goes....! 73 TexasAg |
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Quoted: This is a "position" specific course, within the NIMS/ICS framework. The National Wildland Coordinating Group (NWCG) is one of the lead agencies involved with Wildland Fire response....along with other federal groups and each state forest service. In Texas, the Texas Forest Service (TFS) has the lead for wildland response and coordination.........and as we all know, they are having a busy year. TFS and other state agencies.....DPS, TEEX, Nat Guard, etc....all use the "position specific" functions, within our NIMS / ICS structure. The NWCG commo tech class is geared toward wildland response........but it is very good at covering functions, forms, task assignment, logs, and documentation. As we all know..... a good commo plan is a must for an incident to go well.....!!! Let us know how it goes....! 73 TexasAg I'm looking forward to the class. I'm one of the Texas Army MARS comms detatchment to the State Guard. We get deployed mainly for major disasters that have taken out the normal avenues for comms. The Com-L class is next. |
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Quoted: Is there anything like this for non-DHS affiliated people? Unknown. Everybody here in this class is working for an agency or department of some kind. I'm the only one in the entire class who's taking this thing on my own dime. Lunch is over.....back to learning. 
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I think there are some online DHS or FEMA classes that anyone can take. They have some good classes that most anyone can get something out of. http://www.fema.gov/prepared/train.shtm |
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OK...a short AAR. The 'All Hazzards Incident COM-T' class was hels M-F this week in Arlington, TX. We spent the first 3 days covering radios, frequencies, restoring/comandeering telephone service, computer networking, repeaters, gateways for combining different radio systems to talk to one another, satellite comms, and NICS. All the basic communications avenues that are requsite for establishing or restoring communications on a disaster or hazzard event like a hurricane, urban search & rescue situation, earthquake or terrorist event hen the existing infrastructure has been compromised or negated. Wedensday afternoon we got a tour of the new Cowboy Stadium comms center. It actually took background checks on everybody to get us in.  They have AMAZING capabilities, but that's all I'm allowed to say about the facility. Seriously.  Thursday, we had a field exercise. We started the day with an incident briefing. There were 14 students so we were split into 2 task-forces, each with 4 strike teams, and a leader. TF Alpha and TF Bravo. We then received an ops briefing from the COM-L (Com-Leader) giving us freqs and tasking. Each TF was given a set of GPS coordinates to go to for setting up our FBOs. We then submitted IC-213 forms listing all the gear we felt we would need to accomplish the tasking....and some CYA gear incase of mission change. We checked out 2 sat-radios with UHF radios, VHF SAR radios for each team member, repeaters, antennas and mast systems, gateways, and the ancilliary stuff like connector kits and coax.  One of our rigs loaded up for the exercise deployment. First order of business was to install the satellite radio in my SUV and establish comms with the command net.  This is the Satellite Radio/w phone option, UHF radio, and interface unit.   Installed and operational in my back seat.  The mobile mag-mount sat antenna. Once we created the Command Net link over Sat-radio so we had mobile comms, we caravaned to our FBO (Forward Base of Operations) to set up our gear. Our FBO was at a fire station and the guys at the station gave us a vacant bay to set up in. The next task was to set up a vhf link to the other task force which we did by putting up a yagi on a mast and hooking it to one of the handhelds. It worked great. We programmed up the freqs in our individual handhelds via a laptop and everyone could talk to the TF leader, who had satellite to the Base of Ops (BOO) and the COM-L. We set up the gateway to interface all the UHF, VHF, 800mHz, and sat-radio. The sat-radio case, having a UHF radio in the case, allowed us to interface them and hit the sat-radio with a UHF handheld.  The gateway unit with UHF, VHF, & 800mHz radios attached. The green radio is a Search & Rescue VHF radio we were all using for tactical comms. We were then notified by command to set up a repeater for VHF which we did, then each TF sent 2 teams mobile in each cardinal direction to map the coverage of the repeater footprint. We did that via radio-checks back to the FBO, then the mobile units took GPS coordinates to map the coverage.  This is the back-up sat radio system deployed at the FBO. So once the tasking was completed, we demobed back to the BOO and de-briefed. The instructors seemed pretty impressed and told us that was the first time an exercise had gone off without issue. WE BAD!!  The Nation's newest class of All Hazzard COM-Ts. |
