Photo By Spc. Marilyn Spencer | Air Force Capt. Loring Montague (left), part of the North Carolina National Guard’s...... read more read more
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By Sgt. Leticia Samuels, 382nd Public Affairs Detachment
NEW LONDON, N.C. - If you’ve ever worried about your community’s ability to generate power following a natural disaster, you can rest assured that the North Carolina National Guard is planning ahead to help solve this and other potential issues for North Carolina citizens. Local Soldiers and Airmen are now equipped with an innovative mobile communication center that can be set up anywhere in the state in just a matter of hours.
Air Force Capt. Loring Montague, the officer in charge of the Radio Frequency Joint Incident Site Capability, led a crew of operators April 22 as they set up a mobile communication center at North Carolina Emergency Management’s Badin Logistics Support Center warehouse in New London as part of the state’s annual, multi-phased hurricane-preparedness exercise. In this exercise, the mobile communication center gave Aaron Deese, the warehouse manager, the ability to communicate with the state’s Emergency Operations Center in Raleigh when the exercise called for the warehouse’s main power to be disabled.
“It’s basically a very small [phone service], because they can give you your Internet and telephone, and you just plug into the wall of your house,” said Air Force Master Sgt. Christy Brown, the JISC noncommissioned officer in charge. “We have the capability of doing that, and we can extend our services out quite far.”
This spring’s training exercise focuses on emergency assets and capabilities in western North Carolina.
“This package provides communications that syncs up all the command and control so they can talk to each other, hold video conferences, talk to other military personnel and the Pentagon, if we needed to,” Montague said.
This center gives government agencies the ability to communicate statewide using various platforms. Furthermore, emergency management personnel can communicate with first-responders across the state using antennas that convert responders’ radio frequencies and allow interchangeable levels of communication between multiple agencies.
In an emergency, the system’s diesel-fuel generators give agencies an operations center with at least eight hours of auxiliary power for the command post.
“In a situation where it would take days to restore power and emergency personnel have to get in to save lives, we are there so they can communicate within their infrastructure and communicate with whomever they need to,” Brown said.
In the event of an emergency, North Carolina National Guard Soldiers and Airmen stand ready to support state and local civilian authorities. In September 2011, almost 150 NCNG personnel were activated in eastern North Carolina in response to Hurricane Irene. This past February, more than 100 soldiers and airmen supported North Carolina Emergency Management in the Raleigh area following Winter Storm Pax.
| Date Taken: | 04.22.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 04.25.2014 13:33 |
| Story ID: | 127621 |
| Location: | NEW LONDON, NORTH CAROLINA, US |
| Web Views: | 150 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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