Welcome to the Ventura County
Auxiliary Communications Service

 

 

Ventura County Auxiliary Communications Service (ACS) is an all volunteer organization providing law enforcement, city and county governments, hospitals, and Red Cross with critical radio communication services during natural and civil disasters.  These services are often provided when all other forms of communications, including cell phone and telephone service, have failed. 

 

Officially, members are County Disaster Service Workers – ACS Classification working under direction of the Ventura County Office of Emergency Services, a division of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department. ACS is divided into eight Areas, corresponding to the eight Ventura County cities.  For example,  Area 2 serves Conejo Valley including Thousand Oaks, Newbury Park, Oak Park, and portions of Westlake.

 

ACS members operate an extensive emergency radio communications network covering all of Ventura County with ties to similar networks in Los Angeles County, Santa Barbara County, and the California State wide emergency communications network.  Within Ventura County, ACS has permanent radio stations located at law enforcement facilities, area hospitals, city and county government centers, the National Weather Service, and Red Cross Shelters.  This network allows these served agencies to directly communicate in the early hours of a disaster while cell phone and telephone service is in the process of being restored.

 

The extensive ACS communications network also provides decision makers at these served agencies with critical information on the extent of the  disaster and detailed information on the conditions of residential neighborhoods, schools, roads, bridges, and other aspects of the County’s infrastructure, as well as the condition of the served agencies themselves.  ACS members stationed throughout the county provide disaster workers with communications back to government Emergency Operation Centers and report on the movement of people including traffic flows along evacuation routes.   This information is vital to decision makers in planning and executing the disaster recovery.  ACS is the only organization with the staffing and communication facilities capable of provide this critical service.

 

ACS members consist of both licensed amateur radio operators and non-radio operators.  The licensed radio operators handle communications on the ACS voice and digital communication networks.  In addition, the radio operators provide rapid response technical and operational services needed to quickly set up field radio station where they are needed, as well as maintaining the networks as the crisis unfolds.   The non-radio operators handle all of the organizational activities necessary to keep the ACS team functioning.  These duties include handling the flow of message traffic between agency personnel and the ACS radio operators, working out ACS staffing assignments for 24 hour a day multi-day operations, monitoring the location and safety of deployed members, tracking resources, plus maintaining the records and logs critical to ACS operations during the crisis.

 

 

Information on conditions throughout the County is extremely important to decision makers at the served agencies.  However, they do not have the time or the people to handle the massive amount of detailed information flowing in on the ACS networks.  Converting this “raw” data into information that the decision makers can use, verifying its accuracy, organizing it into summary (outline style) reports, plus creating and continually updating detailed situation maps are critical tasks performed by the ACS non-radio operators.

 

ACS members typically work in Emergency Operation Centers, at disaster sites, and other very sensitive locations.  Because of the sensitive nature of these assignments, all perspective ACS members must undergo a thorough background search conducted by the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department, be finger printed and have their picture taken. 

 

If you're interested, we will be having a general meeting within the next few months. The meeting will be held on a weekend, Saturday and Sunday.

 

 

 

ACS AREA -2 Staffing Positions

Non-Radio OPS

Message Handler

Administration

·        Staffing

·        Records

·        Logs

·        Resource

·        Tracking

Analysis

·        Data Collection

·        Information Fusion

·        Mapping Services

·        Summary RPT

·        Detailed RPT

Radio OPS

Net Control

Radio Operators – Many Locations

Radio Communications Tech Support

 

If you’re interesting, we will be having a general meeting within the next few months.  The meeting will be on a week night, Saturday and Sunday.

 

Please send us an e-mail if you want to be notified on the dates of the meeting:

 

Jerry B. Goldman, EC

kc6jso@gmail.com