BCHHEARTis a group of licensed amateur radio operators who have made a commitment to to hospitals and medical facilities within San Bernardino County to assist when normal communications fail.

BCHHEART is an ARES® (Amateur Radio Emergency Service®) group in the Orange  Section of the ARRL (American Radio Relay League).

Most of our members are also members of their local RACES Team, the American Red Cross Disaster Services Team, or another ARES group, though this is not a requirement. Some of our members have worked in hospitals or have been part of other groups the provide support for the medical community. Again, this is not a requirement to be part of BCHHEART.

If you have a passion for service to others when disaster or emergency strikes and are a licensed amateur radio operator, we invite you to apply to join BCHHEART.

Base Qualifications to become a member of BCHHEART:

  1. Be a currently licensed amateur radio operator (get your license – it’s free)
  2. Own or be willing to purchase an HT (handy-talkie or hand held) radio
  3. Accept our Member Expectations (a copy will be emailed to you after we have processed your application.)

To get a head start on the free online course work, you can work your way through these FEMA course unless you have completed them within the past 5 years and have your certificate of completion.

Please save your completion certificates electronically so you can submit them when requested.

Our Emergency Coordinators

BCHHEART has broken the county into Zones. Each Zone has an ARRL Emergency Coordinator (EC) assigned as the lead for the area. To be an EC you need to be a current member of the ARRL and then there are two ARRL online courses that are required to be an Emergency Coordinator for BCHHEART (this is an ARRL requirement for ECs):

  • EC-001: Introduction to Emergency Communication
  • EC-016: Public Service and Emergency Communications Management for Radio Amateurs

Both of these courses can be found here on the ARRL Catalog page. These courses are more in depth and by design will take more than a weekend to complete. If you are interested in being an Emergency Coordinator, please contact Bob Smith.

If you are interested in serving the emergency communications needs of our San Bernardino County hospital and medical facilities and becoming a member of BCHHEART, please complete our membership application here.