Matt Meola
ex KCØDXW
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Matt Meola ex KCØDXW |
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ARESlog
ARESlog is a program which was inspired by the experience in working on the Hi Meadow Fire in June of 2000. Both my XYL, Tracy (KCØEFM) and I were involved as Ham Radio Operators, particularly during the initial attack, the first night. Tracy had a particularly interesting experience. At one point during that first night, Jeff, KIØFT, grabbed her, sad her down at the flagpole with two other hams, and told her that her first, best destiny was to be a scribe during that situation. He gave her a pad of paper and a pen and she was off to the races taking notes. Mostly she copied the important parts of what the individual divisions were saying. OK, so things are going fine, when a division calls in (I can't remember which) and says that they are at CO 126, the road between Pine Junction at Highway 285 and the town on Pine, to the south. They report that they are falling back, being pursued by the flames, and they need to know in which direction to head to escape -- North or South. Well, in part, due to having good logs, the proper direction was ascertained and relayed, allowing the crew to escape without incident. The next day, we caught up with a friend of ours who lives on Lo Meadow Drive (no kidding, VERY near the start of the fire), and he told us that the news was reporting that a bunch of ham radio operators saved the lives of a fire crew the previous night. It seems that had the crew gone North, their escape route was blocked, and by then, the fire would have trapped them in that section of the road. Tracy was something of a heroine. Well, that day, Tracy began drawing up some of her thoughts for a program to facilitate logging. She kept telling me, "I can type faster than I can write. You need to write a program to allow me to type this stuff!" Work is progressing on this somewhat slowly, although I'm further along than on my other software projects. The intent of the thing has mutated from strictly logging to more of an incident management package, following the precepts of the Incident Command System. I'll have some screen shots here when it's closer to reality. |
