[EAS] Engineer Emergency Credentials

[Rod Simon]

Ira  Using credentials for a origination and doing another job could get you in big trouble. I was working one disaster where a person used their Red Cross ID to gain access to take pictures. They were promptly escorted out of the area by the local Sheriff because he was not signed into the Red Cross roster for the Job.
 
I'm writing this from the hotel room, where I am on staff for a severe Weather / Disaster relief conference. For a couple hundred disaster response staff and managers and I can grantee you over 80% will agree with the following.
 
Ira was spot on with the statement "become a known entity for the EM folks"  this is extremely important to do in advance..
 
Media IS part of "The Plan" meet with the LOCAL EM and most will not have an problem issuing you a document in advance to access your equipment. One Issue with this for major metropolitan areas  like Chicago where I am located is where do you start.  I do know this if WBBM,WLS or WGN were off the air,  Mark Edingburg or Alicia Tate-Nadeau (Cook county and Chicago's emergency managers) will want to get them back on the air to help (sometimes done poorly or biased) to get information to the public
 
My 25+ years of both large and small disaster response, from Texas to Florida to Boston one thing I know is the local authorities are still in charge, they may bring in state or federal assets to assist and even turn over some of the responsibilities to other more experienced managers but the responsibility is still local even though it may appear they are not. 
 
While I agree with most of what Rod Z  has said  the bottom line is 90% of the engineers here are talking about 1 or 2 counties that your transmitters are in so focuses on them.  For the 10% of us who don't always work local that can pose a problem many times it does become easier if you have local credentials from someplace else plus have communication from the local station like an email on your phone requesting your services will go a long way to allow you access. Plus the ease of access will greatly be affected by your attitude when you approach the check point.
 
Then there is the few who just want a state ID   to brag about, I once held an all access  ID and keycard for the state EOC,
 
..............................................................................(I picked it up from my son's desk but then had to give it back!)
 
Last but not least every broadcaster should take some of the FEMA courses on NIMS
https://training.fema.gov/nims/nims.aspx
 
Rod S
 
Sent from Mail for Windows 10
 
Ira wrote:
If your local engineer holds a ham radio license, that could be the
ticket!
Or at least he/she could join the state RACES program, get an ID card
and
become one of the "Assets."  If an engineer is not a ham, one could join
a CERT
team if available and also become a known entity for the EM folks.
 
On 2017-02-15 10:44, Rod Zeigler wrote:
> I have dealt with credentialing in the past few years and ran into
> this little bugaboo at the state level.
> In many states if you are not part of "The Plan" you cannot get
> credentialed.
> Those with state credentials are considered "Assets" to be used by the
> EM in charge of the incident.
 
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