19-year-old heads state's ham radio emergency corps
By LEE WILLIAMS and MIKE CHALMERS, The News Journal
Posted Sunday, May 6, 2007
Delaware's Communication Corps coordinator is a 19-year-old college student who enjoys watching cartoons and when school's out, lives with his parents in Lewes.
The Delaware Emergency Management Agency chose Justin Kates, a University of Delaware freshman, to head its newly formed Communication Corps, which they hope will coordinate amateur radio enthusiasts across the state in the event of a terrorist attack, natural disaster or other emergency. The program is funded by federal Homeland Security grants.
DEMA Director Jamie Turner refused interviews about Kates and wouldn't address why he was chosen to head the Communication Corps, but said Kates is "very mature for his age."
Kates, who is majoring in emergency and environmental management, said he's been a "ham" for the past four or five years and wanted to use his hobby to serve the community, as other hams have done during hurricanes and other natural disasters.
"Ham radio came to the rescue in many of those incidents, and we wanted to establish a program in Delaware to coordinate those resources," Kates said.
Kates' Communication Corps Web site -- ( http://kb3juv.blogspot.com/ ) with government logos and pictures of him and others working on radio equipment -- contrasts with Kates' personal Web site. There, he talks about college parties, the cartoon "Space Ghost" and how much he loves watching cars do "burnouts" by spinning and squealing their tires.
"It's almost like two separate people," Kates said. "There's the side of me that goes to school, then there's the work side. I'm a different person from who I am out of school."
Kates is paid about $5,000 a year to lead the Communication Corps by recruiting other hams and working with emergency management professionals on standard training and equipment purchases, he said. He embodies the goals of President Bush's grass-roots effort after 9/11 to create Citizens Corps, a network of volunteers who could respond at a moment's notice to terrorism or disaster in their neighborhoods.
"Currently in this country, we have a vast crime prevention network, and a natural disaster preparedness network, and a public health network. Building on that infrastructure, we're hoping to design and strengthen a new homeland security effort," the White House said in a 2003 briefing about the Citizen Corps initiative.
Since 2003, the Delaware program has spent about $630,000, according to the state's records. About a third of the money has been spent on salaries for two full-time workers: Robert George, a National Guard retiree who earns about $42,000 a year, and Marny McLee, an Air Force veteran who earns about $37,000 a year. Most of the remaining money has paid for Community Emergency Response Teams training and support for police auxiliary programs. The program has been awarded another $370,000 in federal grants that have not been spent yet.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has awarded more than $121 million to Citizen Corps nationally since 2002. There have been tremendous successes and some failures.
Early on, Bush lumped TIPS, the Terrorist Information and Prevention System, into Citizen Corps. The TIPS program would have turned millions of U.S. Postal Service employees, cable TV installers and others into secret informants by having them report suspicious activity to Citizen Corps officials.
When the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups protested, TIPS was terminated.
After Katrina, more than 14,000 Citizen Corps volunteers from every state joined relief efforts. "They were successful because they had coordinated ahead of time with local businesses and volunteer groups, and because they were familiar with and implemented elements of the Incident Command System," the White House said in a report called "What Went Right."
Familiarizing local citizens with command centers and major incident protocol has been one achievement of Citizen Corps in Delaware. George and McLee help coordinate programs like CERT training, which more than 900 Delawareans have received.
The Rev. Bill Williams of Cedars Church of Christ in Wilmington is one of the few civilian CERT instructors and was paid more than $6,000 in grant money for teaching "disaster psychology" to CERT trainees, including his own congregation.
"We're ready to mobilize on a congregational level, and able to assist the community if called on," he said.
While Turner can point to CERT as a success, Delaware has received money for other Citizen Corps components that have accomplished little.
Fire Corps, which recruits volunteers to help local fire companies, has spent about $5,000 so far to publish brochures and buy advertising to promote the program, said James Monihan, who chairs the Delaware committee for Fire Corps for the National Volunteer Fire Council.
But fire officials said the recruiting effort faces resistance among fire companies and firefighters who are reluctant to extend membership to people who aren't going to fight fires.
"I can't get any interest in the fire company," said Ralph Satterfield, who has tried to start a Fire Corps program at Magnolia Volunteer Fire Co. "They just look at me dumbfounded. But it's a fantastic idea. People don't understand someone needs to do paperwork and change the light bulbs and sweep up."
Christiana Care has an active chapter of the Medical Reserve Corps consisting of its own employees. The state's Medical Reserve Corps was founded in 2002 with about $100,000 from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, but didn't have its first organizational meeting until November 2006.
The delay, said Lisa Henry of the state Division of Public Health, was caused by initial questions about liability on the part of medical professionals. Henry said that after several people responsible for organizing the corps quit, newly assigned employees had to start from "square one."
Even though the first grants arrived more than four years ago, the state's Medical Reserve Corps is just now starting to decide how it will be deployed in the event of an attack.
http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070506/NEWS/705060355