Emergency Auxiliary Radio Service

The BEARS Team (Bainbridge Emergency Auxiliary Radio Service) represents a dedicated group of individuals who strive to ensure the smooth flow of communication in the community, especially during times of a major disaster.

Recognizing that everyday communication systems like cell phones, landlines, and the internet might become incapacitated during large-scale incidents, power outages, or limited transportation scenarios, the team focuses on creating unified, efficient, and robust alternative systems for communication.

Team Leads

Lionel Halvorsen

Dan Gregson

Mission and Community Impact:

The Bainbridge Emergency Auxiliary Radio Service (BEARS) Team is instrumental to the community's resilience, serving as the crucial communication line during emergencies or crises. Their work ensures an uninterrupted flow of critical information when traditional communication channels may fail or be overwhelmed. Through a whole-community approach, the BEARS Team collaborates with various groups, identifying their unique needs and capacities, and incorporating these into a comprehensive community strategy. The team strives to optimize resource utilization and avoid duplication of efforts, thus promoting efficiency and coherence. Their commitment to sharing best practices and lessons learned fosters a sense of trust and unity in the community, fortifying its collective strength and resilience during adversity.

About the Team:

The BEARS Team functions as an essential link in the community's disaster response infrastructure, ensuring that crucial information is relayed accurately and timely when traditional communication systems may be compromised. They work closely with diverse community groups to understand and address their unique communication needs during emergencies. By promoting interoperability and efficient resource use, they enhance the community's overall disaster response capabilities. The team's dedication to openness and collaboration fosters trust and unity, reinforcing the community's collective resilience. Their invaluable contributions help make the community stronger and better prepared for adversity.

Resources and Questions

  • The BEARS team collaborates with community stakeholders to develop alternative systems for communication. This could involve creating equipment, procedures, training programs, policies, and documentation that could replace or supplement everyday communication systems during a disaster.

  • During an activation, the BEARS team ensures that the communication systems they have developed are operational and effective. They monitor and manage these systems to provide constant communication support to the community.

  • This team is activated in the event of a large-scale incident that disrupts or threatens to disrupt everyday communication systems.

  • Reach out directly to the team leads listed above.

  • The 'whole-community approach' adopted by the BEARS team means that they work with different groups within the community, understand their specific communication needs and capabilities during a disaster, and integrate these needs into the broader communication strategy of the community.

  • The BEARS team provides training on how to use the alternative communication systems like Ham Radios.

  • To sign up, you can fill out the volunteer application available in the volunteer section.