Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and Happy Holiday Season to All!

Hello to all..

On behalf of the entire Eastern Massachusetts ARES staff, we would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and Happy Holiday Season to all! We feel we had another successful year within Eastern Massachusetts ARES. While we did not have a significant deployment or significant ARESMAT as we did in 2008 with the ice storm, much work was done over the past year.

We held two successful section level Emergency Communications Workshops (Boston and Acushnet) which trained approximately 40 Amateurs within ARES. South Shore ARES completed a very successful Amateur Radio licensing class of 15 people with all 15 people obtaining their Ham license. An EMCOMM Workshop will be targeted for this group as we move into early next year. Cape Cod ARES has had several deployments and exercises with the Barnstable County Local Emergency Planning Committee including its most recent deployment the weekend of December 19th and 20th for the Blizzard of 2009 and their most recent multi agency sheltering exercise in November. They have also held several Amateur Radio licensing classes and workshops for those newly licensed Amateurs significantly increasing the number of ARES members on Cape Cod.

We held two section wide drills for 2009 and one district to district exercise between South Shore ARES and Cape Cod ARES. The first section wide exercise being the Massachusetts Statewide Hurricane drill on the first Monday in June and the second section wide drill was in November coinciding with the Cape Cod and Islands Mulit Sheltering exericse. Both exercises went very well with the November exercise being the most interesting and successful as there was less than 24 hour formal notice for the exercise, yet there were over 70 participants outside of Cape Cod and the Islands with close to 100 participants counting those involved on Cape Cod and the Islands. In addition, the May district to district exercise between South Shore and Cape Cod ARES was very successful and was setup more widely to cover the entire section in the November exercise because of its success.

We had 2 Eastern Massachusetts ARES Stand-by moblizations for the year. The first was for the remnants of Tropical Storm Danny in combination with the funeral of Senator Ted Kennedy. The second stand-by mobilization was the weekend of December 19th and 20th for the Blizzard of 2009. Neither required section wide ARES deployment though Hams were deployed to shelters on Cape Cod and the Islands during the Blizzard of 2009.

Along with auxiliary support for RACES at the city and town level for the various exercises and monthly RACES Nets, ARES also supported Non-Governmental Organization as required. Eastern Massachusetts ARES also continues its very strong support of the National Weather Service Taunton SKYWARN program and ARES members trained in SKYWARN provided reports across various weather events over the past year.

We are very proud and thankful for all your support of RACES, Eastern Massachusetts ARES, local and state Emergency Management and the National Weather Service. We look forward to working with all of you again in 2010! Thanks to all for their continued support of Eastern Massachusetts ARES!

Respectfully Submitted,

Robert Macedo (KD1CY)
ARES SKYWARN Coordinator
Eastern Massachusetts ARES Section Emergency Coordinator
Pager #: (508) 354-3142
Home Phone #: (508) 994-1875 (After 6 PM)
Home/Data #: (508) 997-4503 (After 6 PM)
Work Phone #: 1-800-445-2588 Ext.: 72929 (8 AM-5 PM)
Email Address: rmacedo@rcn.com
http://ares.ema.arrl.org
http://www.wx1box.org

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