Emergency and Disaster Preparedness Communications

[JediBMC]

My role within my organization has changed a great deal as of late. One key change is that I am now responsible for coordinating my hospital's Emergency/Disaster communications, both internally and externally.

Does anyone know of any news groups or forums that are geared towards this type of information? I have looked through all of the Yahoo! groups and found a few that appear to be pretty devoid of activity.

Thanks, in advance,

-Brian-
I'm not an actor, but I play one on TV.

 

[telman22]

i am in the same position as you are except i oversee telecom for 4 acute hospitals and about 40 off-sites and long term cares and spent alot of time browsing the net but came up with very little, we ended up putting our own together. Good luck

 

[skip555]

ther is a ton of knowldge on this site and I belive the board owners will start a forum for you if you ask

why not start your own here ?

 

[JediBMC]

I have read through most of the information in this forum. As for starting my own, I looked at that and stopped at step 3:

STEP 3: PAYMENT
Click the "Go" button below. You will be taken to PayPal to arrange for your monthly subscription payment (first month free, then $9.95 per month introductory rate). Once completed, PayPal will return you to Tek-Tips Forums to start your group.

As an alternative, I decided to create a Yahoo! group to facilitate this. Hopefully I wall get a good number of participants, so that there can be a valuble exchange of information. (The yahoo group is Disaster Communications located at

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/disaster-comms/)

-Brian-
I'm not an actor, but I play one on TV.

 

[skip555]

good luck to you

I think you could get it free here maybe under threads ?

I really donjt know if you have any intrest you might want ot contact the board admins and see

I think what you found was for the private groups , I really dont know though

 

[johnpoole]

checked the yahoo site, not to much response. i have set up systems for e and d recovery for several sites. both gov 911 sites and hospitals. the most redundant systems i installed were redundant nortel products. each switch being redundant helps, but with fiber networks i add modules (ipe) from switch a at site b and c and d.. and reversed the process.. so if i lost a switch i could only lose half of the phones at that site, with pri's interlaced, numbers were totally portable and even if 4 of the 5 switches were down, all 5 hospitals had phones in each dept.. behind that i had a stand alone opt 11 for each site with digital sets. they were a last option switch. if all outside comm was down, each dept had comm with all other depts.. with nortel i could run reports to see if any phones were down. i've found out that backup systems that only get tested during an event, quickly become part of the problem.. your system type and budget is the only limit you have in being ready for the next problem

john poole
bellsouth business
columbia,sc

 

[pbxn]

You may also want to contact your LEC and or CLEC for what they offer. Most carriers, Bell, MCI etc offer some sort of disaster planning. They can control call routing at cloud level, and redirect these calls in a short period amount of time.
Redundant systems as mentioned are where to go. From switches to circuits the possibilities are endless.
Circuits are a good place to look, if some extra money can be spent. Research all of your provider options and look for items such as RBOC provided cable vs. a CLEC privided cable. Fiber rings, with auto recover etc. Then you can look at at self maintaining switchable CSU's. You can have two differant circuits provided by differatn carriers, and in the event that Bell (no offense John) circuit went down, CLEC A would pick right up. This topic is becoming more and more important as time goes by.
Brian

 

[johnpoole]

we run redundant ckts as well as redundant switches. in this switchroom i have an 81, backed up by a opt 11. that is the smallest backup that i would recogmend. we also have remote cab's off of other switches. we alos have did's feeding from two different bell offices. the merridian 81 is a great switch as long as you have someone that can maintain it. it's not a keysystem, and as long as you remember that, it will stay up..

john poole
bellsouth business
columbia,sc

 

[johnpoole]

btw, if bell ckts and/or equiptment didn't go down, i would be drawing unemployement.. no offense taken

john poole
bellsouth business
columbia,sc

 

[pbxn]

Nice John. Figured you would get some humor out of that..

 

[ISDNman]

Just make sure that your incoming PRIs are truly redundant. If they are all on the same fiber then then they are prone to "backhoe fade". Even if they are on a fiber ring you should have *some* of them via some other path.

You might explore with your LEC the types of options described here:

http://www.qwest.com/techpub/77340/77340.pdf

http://www.qwest.com/techpub/77332/77332.pdf

Good luck

 

[jerryreeve]

Take a look at:

http://www.ready.gov/business/index.html

there is some good data and ideas on where to start your emergency plan.

----------------------------
JerryReeve
Communications Systems Int'l
com-sys.com