• “A masterpiece of simplicity and design.”
• “I was impressed.”
• “The technology that it uses is at the top of the spear.”
• “We couldn’t be happier.”
• “It’s a great idea.”

MIAMI, Fla. – June 18, 2008 – Emergency managers in Tallahassee and at local levels are issuing statements of support, appreciation and anticipation in the wake of a successful test of America’s Emergency Network’s emergency communications system.

Many are declaring themselves eager to deploy the system for the benefit of support personnel in the field and citizens in homes and offices.

“It couldn’t be easier to use, in my opinion, and can be explained easily to individuals that may not be as tech-savvy as others,” said William Jayson Southworth, emergency management senior planner for Putnam County (Fla.).

“I feel that we – the users – have only begun to scratch the surface of what this system, when rolled out to all counties, would allow us to do to help protect our residents,” Southworth said. “We look forward to its continued use.”

Those and other affirmative comments flowed into the Florida Division of Emergency Management upon completion of the state’s three-day Annual Hurricane Exercise in early June 2008 – a test that featured the first real-time deployment of AEN’s satellite and Internet-based video streaming capabilities.

America’s Emergency Network was designed by Bryan Norcross, the CBS network hurricane analyst, and Max Mayfield, former director of the National Hurricane Center. When fully deployed, it will provide every emergency manager, whether from a large county or a small town, with an outlet to reach the public, the media and colleagues in other government offices. The satellite-based AEN system is designed to continue to work after a disaster when power lines, phone lines, cell phone towers and terrestrial Internet systems are rendered inoperative.

During the three-day statewide practice exercise in response to a mock disaster called Hurricane Herb, AEN streamed live media events and situation reports from the Florida Division of Emergency Management operations center in Tallahassee to emergency management officials in counties and municipalities around the state. AEN also beamed local briefings and media events from Duval County (Jacksonville), Putnam County and Islamorada back to state officials in the capital.

Hundreds of Internet hits from Tallahassee and around the state were recorded by the AEN network as managers in emergency centers and staffers in the field accessed the real-time events previously unavailable to them.

The greatest benefit to the State lies in the ability to receive and monitor local briefings and media events from municipal and county agencies that would not always gain media coverage beyond their local market, if available at all…,” according to an official state review of AEN’s performance. “This resource can become more viable to the State as local entities come on line.”

The entire report is available here:
www.emergency.info/aen-hurricane-exercise-061608.pdf

“This gives us a chance to stretch our system and find new and better ways to do things,” Craig Fugate, Florida’s director of emergency management, said of AEN. “The more information we have in real time, the better our response can be.”

Local officials also praised AEN’s performance. Here are some of their comments from the Florida report:

• “I just wanted to thank you for allowing Duval County to participate in the exercise demonstration of the AEN Service…. It is significantly simpler in comparison to our existing web conference devices. I can see the future value of this service.”
  - Lorin L. Mock, division chief/emergency manager, City of Jacksonville/Duval County

• “The system itself is a masterpiece of simplicity and technology. The system is in place and it does not interfere with any of our daily duties running about the building, it is compact and very easy to move if need be… The technology that it uses is at the tip of the spear.”
  - William Jayson Southworth, emergency management senior planner, Putnam Couny

• “The AEN system test was a great success on our end and is an enormous assist to our municipality. During the test, we had our village manager and mayor present and they were very impressed and excited about the new capabilities…. We look forward to expanding our participation and actual operational deployment of the system when necessary!”
  - William A. Wagner, III, CEM, fire chief, Islamorada Fire Rescue

• “Stream from Putnam was perfect from where I was. No issues with delays or picture and sound not synchronized.”
  - Adam Faircloth, emergency management director, Baker County

• “The streaming video and audio was smooth and picture quality was good.”
  - Keith Holman, director of emergency management, Martin County

• “I watched the state EOC on two occasions and Islamorada on one occasion. I was impressed with the ease of my getting access to the information and can certainly see an advantage to having such a system in place….Most of us have issues with our IT folks on bandwidth and this would solve that problem. The concept would also be a great way to share information and to provide adequate information for decisions by all sorts of organizations.”
  - Bob Lay, director of emergency management, Brevard County