Marion County ARES

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Changes, the only constant, are in the works yet again. Driven by a request by the US Department of Homeland Security, the ICS-213 has become the official message form to be used by MARS operators supporting disasters as well as for their ARES/RACES counterparts. The ICS-213 is used by all levels in a disaster response, and thus will mean less transposing and potential for error, dropped portions of messages and lost data. Also, both MARS and ARES/RACES groups recently have begun training in the Incident Command System using courses available from FEMA. This means that all agency and support personnel will be speaking in a single, unified way, lowering the chances of misunderstanding or missing out on the big picture.