San Joaquin County ARES
The Amateur Radio Emergency Service of San Joaquin County is a volunteer group of Ham Radio operations that provide public service and emergency communications in California’s Central Valley.
SJ ARES membership is free and open to all licensed amateurs in San Joaquin County. There are three steps to becomming a member:
- Please use this electronic form (PDF format) to join. The form can be emailed back to us for processing.
- ARES members are also asked to sign-up online as Disaster Health Volunteers. When doing so, please select “communications” as your function and also enter any other credentials you may have.
- Once registered as a DHV, ARES members are eligible to become state-certified Disaster Service Workers, by filling out and returning this form.
Emergency Notification
SJ ARES uses an automated telephone emergency notification system for emergency activation. ARES members are automatically signed up for this system, called CAHAN, the California Health Alert Network. Note that CAHAN only works with Internet Explorer.
Disaster Health Volunteers are also added to the DHV notification system.
Both systems notify members using telephone, e-mail, fax, and SMS, as configured by the user. They are, however, used for different types of messages, so it is important to be signed up on both.
Frequency Plan
We have developed a VHF frequency plan for use by SJ ARES. It includes both local and regional frequencies and should be programmed into ARES members’ radios. This is the same frequency plan loaded into radios at the hospitals and clinics, at the SJ EMS Agency radio room, and in a cache of 14 radios kept at the EMS Agency office. To learn more, visit the frequency plan page.
Emergency Plans
We are starting to develop emergency plans for SJ ARES. Eventually, we hope to have a number of these. So far, we have created a set of frequency plans to help people understand what to do in an emergency. These plans, on ICS-205 forms created in Microsoft Word, show what frequencies are to be used for what purpose. They are a starting point, but in many cases will be adequate for the incident.
South County (Tracy/Lathrop/Manteca)
ARES Net
The Tracy Amateur Radio Club net also serves (for now) as the SJ County ARES net. It meets every Wednesday night at 8 p.m. on the 146.655 - PL 100.0 repeater.
For More Information
To learn more about San Joaquin County ARES, please contact Emergency Coordinator David Coursey, N5FDL.
