The Search for Sandra Cantu

This is the first of several posts concerning Amateur Radio’s involvement in the search for Sandra Cantu, the 8-year-old who went missing and was later found deceased in the community where I live. A Google News search will provide additional information about the incident itself.

Timeline

Sandra Cantu was reported missing at approximately 8 p.m. on Friday, March 27, 2009. Amateur Radio was involved in the search for her on Saturday and Sunday, March 28 and 29 and Saturday and Sunday, April 4 and 5. Her body was discovered in a previously searched area on Monday, April 6.

I am going to try to run through the incident in chronological order, beginning to end. This version is intentionally light on the call signs of the other amateurs involved (in an effort not to leave anyone out). I am working on the QST version, which will be call sign rich.

The Community

Tracy, CA is a community of plus/minus 80,000 located approximately 60 miles east of San Francisco on Interstate 580, near its intersection with Interstate 5, the main north/south highway on the West coast of the U.S. Many of our city’s residents commute to as far away as San Francisco for work each day.

For many years, Tracy did not have an active Amateur Radio club. We formed the Tracy Amateur Radio Club last June. It has about 15 active members, several shared with the Manteca ARC, located one community over to the East. Tracy formed a CERT group two years ago that today has 75 members. Amateur Radio as an emergency organization is tied to the Tracy Fire Department.

Tracy is located in San Joaquin County. It has separate ARES and RACES groups. I am Emergency Coordinator for the ARES group, which also serves Tracy. In this context, Tracy ARC and SJ ARES may be used interchangeably. ARES and RACES, regrettably, don’t really speak to one another in this county.

The Incident

Sandra Cantu was last seen at approximately 4 p.m. on the Friday she disappeared. Her mother reported her missing to police at approximately 8 p.m. This report will not discuss the law enforcement response, except where it directly deals with Amateur Radio.

Notificaton

There is a sense that notification of volunteers and mutual-aid was slow. It appears unlikely this had any bearing on the eventual outcome, though the investigation remains incomplete.

Amateur Radio and CERT were requested at about 9:30 a.m. on Saturday, 13 hours after the initial missing child report. In the case of Amateur Radio, we didn’t get started until almost Noon because I did not think we had been requested and had no contact with Tracy Fire, which is our primary served agency. Further, another member of my group who was contacted did not know how to activate our group.

Suffice it to say that this was our—meaning my, mostly—only significant failure during the incident. We had never really discussed an activation plan with the Fire Department, even as I began adding people to the telephone emergency notification system (TENS or “reverse 911”) that we use for callouts.

Further, it is not clear the police department understood what volunteer assets were available through the fire department, relying at first on its own senior volunteer program.

Our local Auxiliary Communications Plan will include a notification plan. It is being submitted to the Fire Department for approval. It does a number of other things as well and will be posted here once it is approved.

Judi, W6JCG, operated from Tracy CERT HQNotification planning

Basically, we need a way for fire dispatch to notify us that an incident is taking place. This can be accomplished in several ways. One of our served agencies has 24x7 duty officers who know how to activate the TENS notification system used to activate ARES.

That is one way to activate ARES members and if I am not available that will likely be the method chosen. It is not clear when or if someone besides me and the duty officers should be able to access the notification system directly to issue alerts.

They won’t call if they don’t know that we’re here and what we do

There are big training/workflow/process issues here. It is easy today—with the glow of the incident still surrounding us—to create a plan. But, how will it work three years from now, when many of the people involved today might have moved on to other things?

First, agencies need to know what resources (volunteers and communications in our case) are available and when it is appropriate to call for them. The requires relationships, education, awareness, and involvement in emergency planning that will actually be used when an emergency occurs.

That is easy if your group is called to a real incident every few weeks or months. In our case, this was the first time in a decade (so far as I can tell) that hams were used in a real emergency in San Joaquin County. It will happen more often in the future because of our improved relationships and training. We haven’t even been regular players in exercises until the past year or so.

It is hard to get volunteers excited about training for events that a) never happen and b) they aren’t likely to be involved in even when something occurs. Dealing with that issue may be the most important task I have as EC and it will be never ending.

It’s all about who you know

The key to this is continuous relationship-building and having Amateur Radio advocates inside your served agencies. I take some grief from older hams for organizing one-day HamCram zero-to-Technician licensing events, but this is how you create new hams—and allies inside your served agencies. We also do these with cooperating agencies, such as CERT, hospitals, EMS, and other groups where having an amateur license would be helpful (to them and us).

Having advocates—champions, if you will—for Amateur Radio in your served agencies is absolutely key. With them, you can accomplish things. Without them, your ARES group probably has nothing to do and little reason to exist—except to show up when something bad happens and prove yourselves indispensable.

Back to notifications

So, we need to create is a system where:

• Served agencies know who we are and what we do (and believe we are a valuable resource)
• Served agencies include us in their plans and/or remember to call us when something happens
• There is a clear method by which a served agency can request ARES assistance
• When requested by a served agency we must be able to quickly activate ARES members
• Our members respond and provide a valuable service to the served agency
• There is ongoing training, education, and (importantly) administration necessary to keep this system ready-to-go

The part of this that works best today is notification of members using the TENS system. The problem is that we only have 25 people on the system at present. I am hoping that in the wake of this incident that many more hams will sign-up.

Also, each of these bullets may be different for each of your served agencies. The first three items are not one-size-fits all.

End of this part

This is the end of Part One. At over 1,200 words it is as long as a blog post should be. Stay tuned for Part 2, which will add things I realized should have been in this part and then head into our actual response activities.

Questions? Use my contact form. You are also welcome to post comments.

Comments

[David Gillespie]

David,
The sequence of notification, callout, and response in your Part I article seem common across so many volunteer groups who support public agencies. We, like so many others, are struggling with notification during drills and actual emergencies. Your comment hit at one central theme, who is responsible for notifying/ activating the various groups of volunteers.

We are trying to solve the problem with a virtual "Big Red Button". Its corny but hopefully catchy. We are outlining a web portal for all served agencies and volunteers that would act as an online clearing house of information. The goal is to have the ability for credentialed people/ agencies to activate the various groups, Stormwatch, ARES, RACES, ALERT, SAR, etc. by logging into the AECC (Alabama Emergency Communications Coalition) portal and pressing the appropriate red button next to that group. Each group is responsible for maintaining their membership and when activated messages are sent to group leadership who in turn activate according to their team plans.

Our concept is a work in progress and I am sure will require the efforts of many smart people, but I think your description illustrates how even well prepared groups, agencies and volunteers need a reliable, up to date centralized tool for activation.

73
David
de W4LHQ

[David Coursey, N5FDL]

Hi David:

What happens when the virtual "big red button" is pressed for a group? Does it send email? If so, to whom? How will you know it is received? What if it isn't? I am sure you've thought of these things.

Consider this scenario:

Next time a child goes missing in Tracy, it is likely we will get a "searchers needed now" request from PD for teams in vehicles to begin a "hasty search" for the child.

How would you respond to such a request (or some other "immediate response" situation)?

My goal is 5 vehicles on the street in 20 minutes. I can't do that today, but it's my goal.

The only way that will happen is for some dispatch center to get involved. Someone on-scene decides we are needed (or a plan auto-activates us). Dispatch fires off something (fire tones for a pager?) that hits someone's duty officer (ours or someone who else can set the alert off) and a TENS alert gets sent. In the most ideal world, the dispatch center would do this for us. The standard messages might include "Immediate Activation -- Available stations report on X repeater" that is easy for anyone to send and can be precanned.

We have to be able to hit people's landlines, cellular handsets, pagers, and email is quickly as possible to meet this response goal. It presumes at TENS is available. In other areas, it might be possible to use pager tones on a repeater or something.

What "service agreements" are you making with your agencies? How will your system help (or hamper) your meeting them?

My first impression is your system looks good but will be slow in getting people notified. That may not be an issue or it may not be something that you can change right away. What you are planning--and the thinking behind it--is something we all need to be doing over-and-over to make sure we can attract a crowd when we need one.

Obviously, my system could have worked better that first Saturday. And we really should have been called Friday night. Change is in the wind!

Your friend,

David, N5FDL