Palmetto-CWID transforming Guard's emergency communications capability

Army Communicator,  Fall, 2007  by Scott Bell

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For a third straight year at the beginning of hurricane season in June, the South Carolina Army National Guard sponsored an emergency communications exercise called the Palmetto Coalition Warrior Interoperability Demonstration or Palmetto-CWID. Involving nearly 40 different industry, local, state, federal, and military organizations from the June 2-16, the 2007 Palmetto-CWID exercise included earthquake, hurricane and terrorist disaster event scenarios. Synchronized with the South Carolina Emergency Response Plan, the Palmetto-CWID exercise has resulted in a transformation in the S.C. National Guard's emergency communications capability.

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According to LTC Ronnie Finley, the administrative officer for the 228th Signal Brigade, Palmetto-CWID has resulted in expanded capabilities with military, federal, state and county level emergency operations centers; the identification of different communications challenges each type of disaster creates; the identification and integration of numerous intelligence, satellite and interagency assets which can be made available to future incident site commanders; and the further development of professional relationships within communication communities which are essential to rapidly and effectively responding to a disaster event.

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This year's Palmetto-CWID had what Finley called more robust communications capabilities which provided Voice over Internet Protocol, internet data connections, video teleconferencing, and radio interoperability packages. All of these systems were tied together with other federal, state, county, and local systems including commercial industry partners and showcased to the media of South Carolina for dissemination to the public.

2007 Palmetto-CWID participants included:

Military

USNORTHCOM

USJFCOM

NGB/JCCC

Coast Guard

SCARNG JOC

437 Air Wing

59th TC AVN Bde

228th Sig Bde

228th MCD

151st Sig Bn

105th Sig Bn

108th Sig Bn

111th Sig Bn

43rd Civil Support Team

GAARNG (Crisis Comms)

State / Local

SC EMD

SC-CIO

Berkley County EOC

Dorchester County EOC

Charleston County EOC

N Charleston First Responders

Beaufort County EOC

Jasper County EOC

McClellanville EOC

Charleston AFB

Amateur Radio

Federal

CIPC

SEAHAWK Task Force

FEMA Region IV MERS

Industry Partners

L3 Communications

Quantum Research

pTEREX

SpecOps Inc.

DataPath

Emmen Aerospace

Verizon Wireless

By MAJ Scott Bell

MAJ Bell is a S.C. National Guard Historian.

COPYRIGHT 2007 U.S. Army Signal Center
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning