Desert Messenger

April 05, 2017

Desert Messenger is your local connection for news, events, and entertainment!

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2 Drug Take Back Day 2 Biker Church donations 3 Torch Run planned 3 Town Council vacancy 4 Thrift Store donations 5 Tree City USA 5 Exit 17 construction 6 Editorial 7 Letters to the Editor 10 Traveling with Gypsy Jane 11 Restaurants 11 The Salvation Army updates 15 Assessor's Corner 17 Epi Pen Recall 18 Herb Mama 19 Arrest Report 20 Churches 22 Classifeds 22 Paul Winer Cartoon www.DesertMessenger.com • "Quartzsite's FREE Community Paper" • 928-916-4235 WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5, 2017 VOL. 13 # 255 Now in our 13 t h YEAR! Alwa y s FREE! WHAT'S INSIDE SEE LDS PAGE 16 LDS conducts emergency communciations test On Saturday, March 18 the Quartzsite Branch of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS) conducted an emer- gency communications test. The local unit, called a Branch, is divided into about 20 blocks in order to account for some 265 members of record. Volunteer Block Leaders, both LDS and non-LDS, have several families to check on in an emergency. Block members are to report to block leaders rather than wait- ing for block leaders to contact them. Doing so speeds up re- sponse time and greatly reduces the workload on block leaders. If group texting is used, it be- comes a "Party Line" and all Block members know the status and needs of each Block member. Texting also reduces the overload on the phone system and provides a written record in case the Block leader is busy. Text messages are temporarily stored if the phone system is busy and then trans- mitted when the system comes back up. For the fi rst part of this test, it was assumed that phones were work- ing and members were to report to their block leaders and indicate the number of gallons of drinking water on hand. Once Block Leaders received re- ports from Block members, the second part of the test, which assumed that phones were not working, was put into action. Ra- dio operators from the Emergency Response Communications team, assigned to each Block leader, then reported by radio to the LDS Emergency Operations Center (EOC), located in the church at 455 South Riggles Avenue. Ama- teur (ham) radio was utilized to make this initial report. Members of Emergency Response Communications (ERC) team PHOTO | Courtesy LDS

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