REACT Team 6006 is one part of a much larger tradition of volunteer public-service communications.
Although our Team serves San Fernando and surrounding communities, our identity and purpose extend beyond the boundaries of Team 6006.
We are affiliated with the REACT Council of Trinidad and Tobago (RTTC) and form part of the wider REACT community, whose history of public-service communications extends internationally.
This wider relationship is important because emergencies rarely respect organizational or geographic boundaries.
REACT International
REACT International provides the wider organizational heritage from which individual REACT Teams developed.
REACT's history began with citizens using two-way radio as a means of providing assistance, reporting emergencies and supporting the travelling public.
The technologies available today are vastly different, but the underlying idea remains recognizable:
ordinary people, properly organized and equipped, can use communications to provide a valuable public service.
REACT's broader mission emphasizes public-safety communications in support of individuals, organizations and government agencies, with the objectives of saving lives, preventing injuries and providing assistance.
Team 6006's local mission continues within that tradition.
REACT in Trinidad and Tobago
REACT has developed a long history within Trinidad and Tobago through Teams serving different communities.
Individual Teams maintain their own memberships, leadership, local knowledge and operational capabilities, while remaining part of the broader REACT structure.
Team 6006 was formally chartered on 1 March 1999 as REACT County Victoria/St Patrick, establishing what has now become more than two decades of service.
Today, Team 6006 is based in San Fernando and remains affiliated with the REACT Council of Trinidad and Tobago.
Cooperation Between REACT Teams
No individual Team can reasonably possess every skill, piece of equipment or geographic advantage that might be useful during a major incident.
Cooperation therefore increases the capability of everyone involved.
One Team may have members particularly experienced in radio communications. Another may have useful coverage in a particular area. Individual members may bring experience in amateur radio, first aid, logistics, technology, transportation or emergency management.
During larger incidents, those capabilities become significantly more useful when Teams can work together.
Our constitutional framework recognizes this principle and provides for cooperation with other REACT Teams.
Team 6006 therefore seeks constructive relationships across the wider REACT community.
Communications Require Networks of People
A repeater can extend the range of a radio signal.
It cannot create cooperation.
That requires relationships between people and organizations.
Effective emergency communications depend upon operators understanding who they are supporting, what information is needed, where that information should go and what procedures participating organizations expect them to follow.
Those relationships cannot be improvised effectively in the middle of an emergency.
They must be developed beforehand.
This is why cooperation, joint training, exercises and ordinary communication between organizations are themselves forms of emergency preparedness.
Working Beyond REACT
Our constitutional purpose also recognizes cooperation with organizations outside REACT.
Depending upon the circumstances and assistance requested, this may include community organizations, NGOs, emergency-management organizations, governmental authorities and other public-service bodies.
The objective is not for REACT to duplicate their responsibilities.
Instead, Team 6006 seeks to identify areas where our volunteers and communications resources can provide an additional useful capability.
Sometimes the most valuable contribution a volunteer organization can make is simply filling a communications or coordination gap while allowing professional responders to concentrate on their primary responsibilities.
Local Knowledge Matters
Being part of a wider network does not diminish the importance of local Teams.
Quite the opposite.
Emergency response is inherently local.
Team members understand their communities, roads, terrain, common flooding areas, communications coverage and other practical realities that may be difficult for an organization operating from elsewhere to know.
Trinidad and Tobago presents its own communications challenges, including mountainous terrain, densely developed areas, heavy rainfall, flooding and locations where radio coverage can change dramatically over relatively short distances.
Strong local Teams provide local knowledge.
A strong national network allows that knowledge to be combined.
Interoperability Matters
Different organizations may use different equipment, frequencies, procedures and communications technologies.
That makes interoperability an important consideration.
Team 6006's long-term communications development therefore should not focus solely upon what works internally.
We must also consider whether our systems allow us to communicate effectively with the people we may actually be asked to support.
Sometimes the correct solution will be sophisticated.
Sometimes it will be extremely simple.
Emergency communications should favour reliability and interoperability over unnecessary complexity.
Strong Teams, Stronger Network
A wider organization is only as capable as the individual Teams and people that comprise it.
Team 6006 therefore contributes to the wider REACT network most effectively by first ensuring that our own Team is active, trained, equipped and dependable.
At the same time, we recognize that cooperation expands what any individual Team can accomplish.
Our goal is therefore not independence from the wider REACT community, nor dependence upon it.
It is mutual capability.
Strong local Teams.
Constructive relationships between them.
Cooperation with the organizations we serve.
And communications systems capable of connecting those people when they are needed.
That is how a collection of radios becomes a communications network.
And how a collection of volunteers becomes an organization.