We Won!

As previously discussed HERE and HERE in previous days this week, there has been a bit of a dust-up in SoCal as the Orange County Fire Authority received a backlash to full encryption going into affect for all OCFA radio communications starting earlier this week. California Disasters was right in the middle of this the day the story broke. Guess what happened today as a consequence? I'm not accustomed to such victories in the public arena. To be fair, it was multiple communities/stakeholders raising a ruckus and I am but one member of one of those communities. However, I did go on KFI-AM Los Angeles about it, something which was initially very uncomfortable and took me out of my comfort zone. 

My KFI Morning

So this morning I awoke still being sick albeit a bit better but still not feeling well. I ambled into my little living room and checked the Internet to see what was going on. To my surprise, my protestations yesterday HERE along with my scannerhead cohorts regarding Orange County beginning encryption this week of all its public safety radio communications apparently grabbed the interest of the newsmedia who follow us and also themselves monitor the scanner. There concern, as is our's, is that encrypting public safety radio communications threatens public safety in an ironic twist. By public safety radio traffic being encrypted, not only the public can't listen in on it themselves, but neither can the newsmedia nor scannerheads like us who parse it out and translate it into meaningful information for the public and combine it with other sources of information like other citizen's tweets and webcam images and so forth to create accurate and timely information which is vitally useful to folks living in areas under threat during disasters in California. This was incontrovertibly proved last November in the Camp Fire in Butte County as Paradise and environs was destroyed and 85 people were killed. Many local citizens thanked the scannerhead community for their service helping them to leave when they did by our public postings on Twitter. Anywho, I digress, at about this time I also got a phone call from La Habra from a number I did not recognize and ignored it. Then it texted me and said it was Corbin Carson with KFI-AM Los Angeles wanting to talk to me about this controversy. I initially balked as I did not feel well and felt others in my cohort would be better spokespersons. However, unable to contact them I jumped in and stood in the gap. Below is what resulted.
*Follow-up Footnote: We Won!

Public Safety Encryption Is Bad For Public Safety

This week the Orange County Fire Authority and Orange County Sheriff's Department began full or near-full encryption of their radio communications for fire and law. I'm not talking about the sort of stuff that has been encrypted for years because it was S.W.A.T. activity or surveillance operations and such. I'm talking about classic routine radio communications that so many of us have monitored our entire lives. I grew up in a household which in the 1970s listened to such radio traffic all the time. This is a growing trend in American life as governments at all levels become more militarized and secretive in the post-9/11 world covered in the fig-leaf terrorist concerns and mass shootings. Also, Motorola needs more useless shit (in this context) to sell taxpayers that not only do they not need, but it is not in their self-interest to purchase it through their local governments. There are many different reasons to oppose this trend of which each are valid. Below, my online HAM and fellow scannerhead Ben a.k.a. AI6YRHAM tweeted the below remark earlier today and much more eloquently than myself or anybody else I read making the public safety argument against. This is the argument which I feel most strongly about, even more so than the troubling secretive authoritarian militarization aspect of this trend let alone the inconvenience to the scanner-listening hobby which is the least important argument but an argument nonetheless.

Fern Canyon Fuelbreak

Last week Cal Fire, in cooperation with Paso Robles Fire Department and local residents living in canyon and hilltop homes on the West Side of Paso Robles, conducted a fuel treatment operation using mechanized equipment to create a new Fern Canyon Fuelbreak. The wildland fire worst-case scenario for this community would be for a wind-driven wildfire to enter the city limits with a head of steam by way of these canyons on the West Side. I have skin in the game because a fire roaring out of Fern Canyon could come to my house. Image courtesy Cal Fire (all rights reserved).

Shakeout in the Classroom

Today public and private facilities of various functions conducted the annual Great California Shakeout. It came on a day I was embedded in my classroom at Atascadero High School. I had not heard or read any mention of the annual earthquake preparedness drill being observed at this school and I feared they were not doing it until 10:20 a.m. this date of 10/20/16. Vice Principal Allen broke in over the loudspeaker and narrated an earthquake drill encouraging all students to get under desks and such to protect themselves. I was heartened to see this as I feel this sort of thing is incredibly important and not emphasized enough in society generally. Other sorts of drills at schools are for things like fires and shootings, things which at most schools will never happen. In California there is a 100% probability that a significant earthquake will be experienced at nearly each and every school in the state eventually, something my master teacher/co-teacher pointed out to his drill-disrupted 4th period class this morning. My mom happened to drive by a small Christian pre-school observing the drill at the time appointed so this demonstrates even private education entities participated at least in some cases which I'm heartened to learn. Below is a montage of footage from the Loma Prieta Earthquake (whose 27th anniversary occurred just three days ago) led off by the now-infamous footage of a classroom on the campus of U.C. Santa Cruz getting demolished by the quake. This is followed by a high school gymnasium hosting a girl's volleyball game getting called early. As this footage amply demonstrates, classrooms (and gymnasiums) can be hazardous spaces in a major earthquake. Taking proper precautions such as diving under desks is well-advised. *Note: I forgot to participate in this drill last year so it was nice to get reconnected to it. 

North San Luis Obispo County CERT Gets Hosed

This morning the North San Luis Obispo County CERT assembled at the Templeton Fire Station for a Templeton Fire Department-sponsored hose-training drill at the training grounds nearby. This was done with memories seared into many minds of images of civilians wearing only shorts, T-shirts, and tennis shoes helping San Francisco firefighters haul hoses and fight the conflagration of just one block of the Marina District in the 1989 M6.9 Loma Prieta Earthquake.

Interim Templeton Fire Chief Keith Aggson formerly of Atascadero Fire Department (which department is our patron agency) was the force behind this event even happening and he is to be commended for his initiative in this matter and his underlying vision of how useful an asset CERT can be to local departments which can't be said of all of them unfortunately and I shall leave it at that.

The drill started with the team being broken up into two parts and later those parts were further divided in half. Each group or grouplet watched the experts manipulate the hoses and hook them up and deploy them and then break them down. We as CERT members then imitated what they did and hopefully learned enough that we will retain that knowledge when the inevitable disaster strikes. At the end of the drill we watched the pros fight some small practice fires and then we as CERT members once again imitated the experts and hopefully will remember enough of this to be useful when the time comes. 

What follows is the story of our drill in photographs, all of which are shown in the order they were captured.

All photos by Kim Patrick Noyes (all rights reserved).