Prince George's County REACT
Prince Georges County REACT is a local team of REACT International, The Radio Emergency Associated Communications Teams, and the Maryland State Council of REACT Teams. Our mission is communications. Our volunteer members use their own radio equipment, which they already own and use for personal communications. The team maintains a limited amount of communications and test equipment, and operates a General Mobile Radio Service repeater to facilitate wide-area communications. Although REACT International was founded to coordinate monitoring of CB channel 9, it’s not just CB any more. Most members now use the General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS), a station-licensed UHF radio service with 8 repeater frequency pairs and 7 interstitial simplex channels. An increasing number of our members are also licensed in the Amateur Radio Service, providing communications on VHF-FM and UHF-FM simplex and repeaters and HF for longer-range work. A few members have other capabilities such as marine VHF. Each of these radio services has its own calling and distress frequencies, and one of the primary missions of REACT is still the monitoring of those frequencies.
We also provide communications for public service events and disaster relief agencies. We can set up a temporary, short-range network to provide communications in the area of a public service event. We can set up a portable station at an agency or organizational command post, assign members to “shadow” or ride along with key personnel, and/or stand by at checkpoints for walkathons, etc. Our members relay information between checkpoints or shelters and key personnel at the command post or elsewhere. We interface with the ARRL National Traffic System, American Red Cross, Coast Guard Auxiliary, Amateur Radio Emergency Service, Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service, National Weather Service SKYWARN, and Military Affiliate Radio Service.
Some of our members have various levels of emergency medical training and will use whatever skills they have if they are first on the scene. However, this is not our primary mission, and is not a requirement for membership. We are not police. We have no law enforcement authority. We cannot provide crowd control, security, or routine traffic direction. We cannot solve the basic problems that may result from lack of planning for an event or disaster. We can only relay information between key personnel so that they can solve these problems. If a checkpoint or shelter runs out of supplies, we can relay that information to a command post. If the command post doesn’t have the supplies or a means to transport them, we probably can’t solve the problem.
Current dues are $6 to the local team, $20 to REACT International. <contact us> for further information on membership, nets, and training. Meetings are held on the third Tuesday of the month at the Prince Georges County Fire Services Building. Meetings are suspended during the months of July and August, replaced by a net on our GMRS repeater.
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Prince George's County REACT is a volunteer, not for profit, 501 c-3 tax exempt organization
Designed & Maintained by Illusion Branders
Prince George's County REACT is part of the
