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 NEWS
 Tennessee Army National Guard Mobile Emergency Response Team Advanced Debuts at Vigilant Guard 08 By Sgt. 1st Class Walter van Ochten
                118th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment
 MILLINGTON, Tenn. - An earthquake strikes west Tennessee. Most communications are down. Those needing on-site information to coordinate the relief and sustainment mission are "in the dark". Most are unaware as to what happened and what the current situation is. Without good communications, local responders and those helping them in far-off coordination centers lack the command and control needed to efficiently help the victims of a disaster. To provide this important communications capability, the Tennessee Army National Guard created the Mobile Emergency Response Team Advanced (MERTA). This one-of-a-kind unit is capable of short-notice rapid response to areas which have lost their normal means of communicating because of a disaster. According to Sgt. 1st Class Curtis Garner, operations noncommissioned officer-in-charge for the J-5/7, the MERTA team has two missions: providing a means of communication for command and control and ensuring a means of communication for situational awareness. During Vigilant Guard 08, the goal of MERTA is to give key military and civilian relief leaders a common operating picture. To do this, the team is provided access to the important information from three exercise sites from across the Volunteer State.. The Joint Information Exchange Environment (JIEE) is an internet based program used as a task tracking system by the military. An emergency responder's information exchange program, WEB-EOC, is used by the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency (TEMA) and many local and city governments. Regional and State Online Resource for Emergency Management is a National Guard created site that provides a method of obtaining geographic, demographic and agency information for a relief agency's area of operation. When the MERTA gets the call, it is able to set up an interfacing network of AM, FM, UHF, VHF, Harris 150 and satellite radios. Its personnel also sets up a wireless internet network and download cable news channel signals. All the equipment needed is stowed and move around in one truck towed trailer. The entire package will fit in a C-130 Hercules cargo aircraft. It is also small enough to be loaded into a CH-47 Cargo helicopter, although as yet they have not had the opportunity to do so. MERTA provides key military and civilian leaders with the ability to talk with one another using the equipment that they already have. Since not all communication equipment will talk with one another, there is a need to have both civilian and military communications tied together. When a civilian police or fire department needs to talk with the military unit sent to help them, MERTA can convert the signal and the two agencies are able to communicate. For an example, if one response unit uses FM radios and the supporting unit only has VHS, the MERTA team can send the signal through an ACV 1000, networking the signals together to establish communication between the two different formats. Within 24 hours after receiving a request from TEMA, a two-to-four person MERTA team can move to an event site anywhere within the state of Tennessee. It only takes one hour of set-up before the team is fully operational. MERTA is normally the first military responder at an incident site. With a power generator mounted in the front of their trailer, the unit is basically self sufficient; providing communications for up to four days before being relieved by other signal assets. "We need the ability to talk to everyone; civilian or military," Garner said. "We have to be able to go to the civilian communication network if they can't come to ours."
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