Indiana Amateur Radio
Emergency Service

ARES District 1
Serving Lake, Porter, LaPorte, Jasper, and Newton Counties. 

Organized as an Incident Support Team, Indiana Amateur Radio Emergency Services District 1 (ARES D1) can provide modern, reliable, interoperable, accurate, resilient and timely contingency, emergency, and supplemental (auxiliary) communications; real-time severe weather observation data; resource position tracking and telemetry, ground-truth intelligence (“eyes and ears”), and serve as “force multipliers” for governmental and non-governmental public safety, search and rescue, critical infrastructure (including Hospitals and Public Utilities), and emergency management related organizations and partners at all levels (served agencies) throughout Indiana’s Amateur Radio Emergency Services (ARES) District 1 (Lake, Porter, LaPorte, Newton and Jasper Counties), and beyond, when requested by an appropriate authority, during emergency, disaster and search and rescue incident response and short-term recovery periods, exercises and special events.

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ARES D1 is an integrated, well organized team of properly trained and equipped, capable, motivated, honest and well-intentioned professionally acting volunteers operating from fixed, mobile, remote (virtual) and portable (temporary) locations to provide emergency/auxiliary communicators; trained weather spotters; emergency, disaster, search and rescue and special event supplemental information and intelligence, planning, logistics and liaison personnel trained, ready, willing and able to meet ARES D1’s mission, including operating any communications system, with proper authority, regardless of system ownership, to facilitate the efficient, reliable and effective exchange of modern, interoperable emergency, auxiliary and supplemental communications; incident support; and when requested, lead and coordinate emergent volunteers (Good Samaritans) in conducting incident low-risk task assignments to allow more highly trained and better equipped emergency, disaster and search and rescue personnel to attend to other priority tasks.

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ARES D1 personnel can establish communications between a 9-1-1 center, Police, Fire Rescue, EMS, Public Works, Utility Providers, Hospitals, Vaccination Points of Distribution, Emergency Operations Centers, Incident Command Post, Mobile Command Center and other critical infrastructure locations, or vehicles, and search and rescue personnel in the field.

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Using a mix of technologies, modes, people, frequencies and other capabilities, ranging from analog to digital to telemetry technologies; voice and fax to video, encrypted* data and email with attachments modes; from skilled craftsmen and school teachers, to retirees and self-employed people, to lawyers and engineers; from Medium Frequency (1.5 Mhz.) and High Frequency (21 Mhz.) to Very High Frequency (148 Mhz.) and Microwave/Super High Frequency (2.3-2.7 and 4.9-6.1 Ghz.); from fixed and transportable to mobile, bicycle mounted, foot/walking and portable communications stations; from ARES and General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS), Family Radio Service (FRS), Multi-Use Radio Service (MURS) affiliated volunteers in urban and suburban locations to those in rural and more geographically disbursed locations, which are part of our distributed network model, adding to resiliency; and from commercial and generator powered to battery and solar powered communications stations are what makes ARES D1 a robust, resilient and “value-added” resource for served agencies. (*Restrictions apply).

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ARES D1 can provide interoperability with local, regional, State and federal governmental agencies, the military, including all of the Defense Department forces, Coast Guard, and the National Guard. Additionally, with the Civil Air Patrol, the Indiana Guard Reserve, and similar State sponsored military militia organizations, as well as emergency management and humanitarian relief organizations including the Salvation Army, American Red Cross and others throughout the State, region, across the nation, and if needed, worldwide.

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ARES D1 can transmit and receive encoded Email messages to and from Outlook and other Email systems in use at distant points; provide voice communications, transmission, and reception of Incident Command System (ICS), Hospital Incident Command System (HICS), Red Cross and other emergency incident forms (including Search and Rescue Task Assignment Forms (ICS 104-SAR), Incident Command Task Assignment Forms (ICS 204), Spreadsheets, photos, other Images and more. And they can provide real-time weather information and a direct two-way radio connection to the National Weather Service Forecast Office.

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Successful cyber-hacking of ARES D1 data communications is virtually impossible and cyber-attacks are easily thwarted. ARES D1 uses radio systems that are geographically dispersed. They can be at fixed, mobile or portable locations to meet the need of the organization being supported during the emergency or disaster. Their communications systems use the Earth’s atmosphere as their “transmission media and transport layer;” use a variety of communication modes and digital algorithms, most of which are extremely difficult to intercept and properly decode. And they operate on a wide array of randomly selected radio frequencies, which when combined, make successful cyber-hacking virtually impossible.