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St. Lawrence County RACES/ARES

Thursday, February 6, 2025

What Is RACES?

The St. Lawrence County Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service (RACES) is a reserve that provides the government of St. Lawrence County with a variety of professional unpaid volunteer skills, including administrative, technical and operational, for emergency tactical, administrative and logistical communications, such as with its agencies, municipalities within the County, neighboring governments and the State Emergency Management Office.

RACES mission is to operate and maintain Amateur radio communications systems and to perform unique, accurate and efficient communications services to assist government officials in the protection of life and property. RACES promotes the effective management and utilization of the Amateur Radio Operators in support of civil defense and disaster response recovery.

RACES was established by the FCC in 1952. RACES was envisioned to be a temporary service to provide radio communication for civil defense purposes. It is administered by local, county, and state civil defense organizations and is supported by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as well as the FCC. The rules that apply to RACES are in Section 97.407 of the Commission's Rules. All communications transmitted in RACES must be specifically authorized by the civil defense organization for the area served and only certain types of civil defense communications may be transmitted.

RACES is administered under the guidance of the St. Lawrence County Director of Emergency Services.

St. Lawrence County Emergency Operators Club is assigned the callsign K2SLC. This callsign is used for operations at the EOC and whenever deployed for an exercise or actual emergency.


What Is ARES?

Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES) is a public service division of the Amateur Radio Relay League (ARRL) in the U.S. and Radio Amateurs of Canada (RAC) in Canada. In both countries, ARES members must have a valid Amateur Radio license and must operate their radios according to their country's regulations.

ARRL has divided the U.S. into 15 Divisions, each one or more states. Divisions are further divided into 71 administrative Sections which are divided into Districts. Districts are often made up of several counties. St. Lawrence County ARES is in the Atlantic Division, Northern New York Section, and a District composed of Jefferson, Lewis, and St. Lawrence counties.

ARRL has negotiated Memorandums of Understanding with organizations such as the American Red Cross, Department of Homeland Security, and Salvation Army to define how ARES will interact and support the organizations. At the local level, both RACES and ARES often work together to provides emergency communications during disaster events.

RACES has some FCC restrictions governing when it can be active while ARES is somewhat more flexible and can support non-disaster events such as fishing derbies and bicycle races. An annual event for ARES is the St. Lawrence International Junior Carp Tournament held each summer in Waddington.

Both RACES and ARES have the same goal, to provide communications and support during emergencies. To see other differences and similarities, please see Two Flavors of Amateur Radio Emergency Operation on the ARRL web site.

St. Lawrence County ARES is assigned the callsign KA2JXI. The callsign was originally assigned to Roger Ousterhout, one of the founding members of RACES/ARES. It was acquired by the club as a memorial to his untiring devotion to amateur radio in the North Country and throughout New York state. KA2JXI is used as the callsign for the Russell repeater which operates on 146.925 MHz (-).


How do I join RACES/ARES?

Assuming you have (or are working on) your Amateur license, the next step is training for emergency communications. It's about 8 hours that can be done online at your convenience.

Future Federal Grant Funding to be received by our RACES/ARES organization, the local government, and ultimately the State of New York, is being linked to federally mandated training. All local, private sector, and non-governmental personnel with a direct role in emergency management and response must be trained in defined levels of awareness of the Incident Command System (ICS) and implementation of the National Incident Management System (NIMS). St. Lawrence County must certify to the state government that the county is compliant with the federal requirements.

Federally provided training is administered by FEMA. Training courses have both an online and classroom format. For the convenience of your scheduling we highly recommend that you take advantage of the online course availability. The required courses are:

Course Who Needs to Complete Course Title (links to FEMA course page) Course
Length
Field
Operators
(everyone)
Planning
Committee
Members
ICS 100 X X Introduction to the Incident Command System 2 hours
ICS 200 X ICS for Single Resources and Initial Action Incidents 3 hours
IS 700 X X National Incident Management System, An Introduction 3½ hours

The FEMA Emergency Management Institute National Incident Management System (NIMS) page has information related to all courses and the links above take you to course specifics.

This training is not hard to do. Go to the course website and all of the information you will need is there. Download the Study-Guide and the Exam. It's an open book type exam. Print out the exam and mark your answers. Then go back to the course website and take the test. Please note, the IS Program now requires a FEMA SID to be used instead of your SSN. If you do not have a SID, register for one here.

After you submit the test you will be notified that you passed successfully and FEMA will email instructions to download and save your course certificate. We need a copy of your certificate for the files at the EOC to support county certification of training compliance.

The last step is to fill out an application. Please send the completed application and copies of your certificates as e-mail attachments to KB2HPR or send paper copies to:

David Jackson
P.O. Box 227
Edwards, NY 13635-0227

Optional Training

ARRL offers the Introduction to Emergency Communication (EC-001). Students are mentored by experienced emergency communications operators who can answer questions and provide real life situations to enhance your understanding. The course is expected to take approximately 45 hours to complete over a 9-week period. Course pre-requisites are ICS-100 and IS-700.


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For questions or comments, please send an email to info @ slcraces.us.

© 2018, St. Lawrence County RACES/ARES