On The Technical Side
Reporter: Gary Tangrady - AAR6BL EEI REPORTS (PART 1) - THE NEED Essential Elements of Information (EEI) - these reports and subsequent
reports such as Info Requests and Info Responses can provide immeasurable communications service to the customers Army
MARS members serve, especially the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Whenever a hurricane, flood, tornado, or other disaster; man-made or
natural hits, FEMA kicks into gear. And that’s where we come in. (By the way - we still need to keep a lookout for that
boat with the animals. It was last reported in Oklahoma and headed for North Texas.) FEMA personnel cannot be everywhere and rely on various MARS stations to
bring them the data they so desperately need in order to properly evaluate a condition. As Army MARS members we do that
by providing the on scene information via the Essential Elements of Information (EEI) report. If you will allow me to regress for a moment, it is the last point
concerning FEMA personnel that I want to stress. This does not only apply to FEMA but our other customers as well.
We are all well aware of the Skywarn program and understand the need for the National Weather Service forecasters to have
input from the field. The same applies to our customers. Be they law enforcement personnel, firefighting personnel,
medical staff, etc. they cannot be everywhere at once. In order to be the most effective with the limited resources they
have, it is absolutely imperative that they have timely and accurate information and that is where we come in. We provide that information and need to be ready to generate and send a
properly formatted EEI or subsequent reports to our customers. However, in order to be ready we need to keep our
equipment working and have ourselves trained in the submission of these reports. There is no better time to get ready
than during the downtimes between disasters. The time for training is now, not during an actual event. When we all joined MARS we were well aware of the need for emergency
communications and that we would be expected to supplement those needs. Recently in Region 6 we have been exercising our
muscles in that regard through the use of EEI training, sending exercise EEI Reports, Info Requests, and Info Responses.
Of all the people that have checked into the various nets and participated by sending exercise messages I think you would
find that most of them would say it was a valuable experience in terms of training and it was really fun. I strongly urge
you, if you haven’t already, to check in and send some exercise messages. Personally, I have found the fun to be the
challenge of getting my message through despite the terrible propagation conditions that have been with us for too long
now. It’s sort of like trying to pull out the tough ones at Field Day when you are competing with a band full of signals!
Not only will you find it fun but you will be fulfilling your requirements in Army MARS as well. So you can be killing two
birds with one stone! In the second part of this article we will be discussing some of the ”How
To” parts of sending an EEI Report concentrating on timely and accurate information. Please read on…….