OMG!!!

What has happened to communication? What has happened to simple, plain, spoken language? I realize that language is a fluid and moving reality. I am aware that each period of time is marked by its unique adaptation of language. New words are created, while others lose favor. Dictionaries need to be routinely updated to keep up with the changes in usage and understanding of vocabulary. But… What has happened to uncomplicated, simple, coherent language?

A few years ago, I was speaking to a group of parents. They were shocked when I began to explain the meaning of the letters: POS, WTF. Their teenagers were using a new language… a new vocabulary. This method to communicate to each other was a natural response to the new technologies being offered. While the use of acronyms is certainly nothing new, I would suggest that we are experiencing a major change in way we will communicate for years to come. IHMO, some of us, like me, if we are unwilling to acquire this new verbiage, are on the verge of experiencing that classic piece of celluloid eloquence from “Cool Hand Luke”: “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”

Each organization has its own unique acronyms. The military has both its unique official and unofficial abbreviated vocabulary… including everything from NCO to FUBAR. The sphere of business likewise, has its share of acronyms: CEO, CFO, and TGIF. Each vocation, each hobby, every activity has it own unique abbreviated language. Certainly included in this list is Amateur Radio. We have our own formal and informal abbreviations… everything from QNI and QSL, to XYL and 73… Oh, I almost forgot… the ARRL.

However, NOTHING prepared me for what I was about to experience when I began the required studies for membership in the Wayne County, Michigan, ARPSC. OMG!!!!!

One of the identified problems that became clear as a result of 9/11 was that a multitude of government agencies were not communicating and cooperating with each other. The conclusion was formed that if there had been a single, centralized, and shared database, not only might have the attacks been prevented, but our response to the catastrophic disaster could have been greatly improved. As a result, the government responded with yet another agency tasked with the job of creating a system which would enable many different agencies and jurisdictions to better cooperate in the event of a large scale attack or disaster. That agency was The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which in turn, through the already established Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) created the Emergency Management Institute (EMI) which provides online education to all interested parties.

OMG!!!! So, I needed to take a couple of tests. No big deal… that is, until I went to FEMA’s EMI website. OMG!!!! If the desire of DHS was the creation of a simple, uncomplicated system which would facilitate the synchronization of multiple agencies, resources, and assets into an expeditious and effectual apparatus from which to respond to a crisis… In the famous words of the “Lost in Space” ROBOT: “Danger, Will Robinson. Danger… This does not compute.” Nowhere have I ever encountered such a multitude of snarled, intertwined, convoluted, incongruent nonsense. I have no idea how much time and tax payer dollars were wasted in the development and production of this project, but dare I say that if we are trying to reduce the over $14 TRILLION national debt… Never again should we allow a government agency to try to simplify ANYTHING!!

If we thought that a well north of 2000 page Health Care bill was a monstrosity… Well, it is a pimple on a gnat’s backside in comparison to the thousands upon thousands of pages of unintelligible, organizational dung known as the NIMS and the NRF. These projects appear to be more interested in job titles and flow charts than getting the job done. They demand that cooperating organizations use plain English, yet all of the administrative and operational documentation is filled with incoherent alphabet-soup gibberish. Nothing proves my point more clearly than in the overuse of acronyms... ICS, NIC, HSPD - 5, 7 and 8, NGO, IAP, EOC, ICP, MACS, MAC, DOC, PIO, JIC, JIS, CSG, DCO, DSCA, EMAC, ESF, IMT, DRC, HSEEP, IMAT, JTF, NCTC, NDMS, NJTTF, SFLEO… ad infinitum. One of FEMA’s EMI study courses features an Appendix with 34 different acronyms; another 22.

I will complete my studies. I will do what is required for membership in the Wayne County ARPSC. I will gladly play along, and fulfill whatever specific assignment that I may be asked to accomplish. However, I can’t imagine that I will ever be convinced that this organizational monstrosity created by the government will in any way whatsoever be the cause of a prompt and proper response to a crisis.

We all witnessed the appalling and illogical response of the government to the BP Oil Spill Crisis in the gulf. The basics principles outlined in NIMS and NRF which call for local control and simplicity were clearly not applied to this crisis. Why would we believe that things should be any different in the next disaster? We have all witnessed the alarming failures, the nonsensical strategies, and the unconstitutional invasions of privacy that are commonplace within the daily work of the TSA. Why should we think that FEMA will operate differently?

And yet, one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me as a Ham came from a TSA Agent. I was traveling with my 2 meter Go-Box through Detroit Metro Airport, and as you might well imagine, my equipment caught the attention of the Airport Security. Two Agents pulled me and my gear aside and asked me to “open” my box. As they peered inside, the older of the two looked up and with a smile responded, “Looks like we’ve got a MacGyver here.” I’m not sure if it was meant as a complement or insult, but it proves my point.

At the end of the day… what matters most is PERSONAL preparedness, not GOVERNMENTAL preparedness. It seems to me that at the very heart of Amateur Radio beats the rhythm of personal preparedness. Those of us in the Amateur Radio community must always be ready to guard and preserve the very thing that enables us to respond “when all else fails”, and that is NOT some mutant Godzilla (think: HSPD -5… think: NIMS and NRF), whose gigantic size and inherent clumsiness ultimately becomes its greatest weakness. But rather, it is the importance of the individual Ham Operator and his quirky, homebrew, MacGyverish compilations of antennas and radio gear.

So… After having completed over a dozen EMI courses, my conclusion is this: If FEMA, and the NRF and MIMS gets any praise at all… it should be from their basic guiding principal that all emergency response begins at the lowest possible level: the individual. In that one point, I couldn’t agree more.