The Western Region Homeland Security Advisory Council has established four caches of handheld Global Positioning System (GPS) Units in western Massachusetts. The caches are housed at the Sheriff Office of each county and are available to first responders for both planned and emergency events. The caches will be available after May 12, 2014.
Each cache contains ten (10) Garmin 655t Rino handheld GPS units, power cords, GPS unit to computer cord, and quick start guides. The GPS units are housed in a hard-cover carrying case with handles and wheels.
The GPS caches are available to all local and state government first responders and are available on a first come, first served basis in response to an emergency or a planned event. The units may be borrowed for a total of five days for a planned event. The units must be picked up by the borrower.
Borrowers of the GPS unit are responsible to return the equipment in the same condition as when loaned. The borrower is responsible for any repairs and/or extraordinary maintenance left to be performed by the Sheriff Office in order to restore the equipment to the condition when loaned.
A training was conducted to roll-out the GPS Caches. The slides from the training may be viewed here.
The borrowing procedure and contact information for the Sheriff Offices are located in the WRHSAC Equipment Resource Guide.
WRHSAC encourages first responders to utilize the GPS units for planned trainings and exercises to familiarize themselves with this equipment that can be a valuable tool in incident response and recovery.
Please address questions to Raine Brown, Homeland Security Program Manager.
