Army relies on 'fully loaded' SUV in hurricane response

View slideshow of federal response to Hurricane Gustav.

BATON ROUGE, La. - If a car dealer was demonstrating the Chevy Suburban parked outside the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Joint Field Office here to manage response to Hurricane Gustav and said, "This baby is loaded," it would not be an exaggeration.

The Suburban is an emergency response vehicle operated by Army North, the command charged with response to civil disasters. It's one of 10 vehicles assigned to the command's defense coordinating officers and their staffs working for the Defense Coordinating Element assigned to work with FEMA in each of the coordinating officers' 10 regions.

Sgt. 1st Class John Keenan, the communications noncommissioned officer for DCE Region 6, based in Denton, Texas, said the response vehicle provides the coordinating officers with easy access to the Defense Department's classified and unclassified networks, commercial cellular networks, and first responder radio networks.

The vehicle carries its own satellite dish, which is less than 1 meter in diameter and connects to Defense networks via a commercial satellite provided by Segovia IP, based in Herndon Va. The connection provides 2 megabytes of connectivity per second, according to Keenan, whose element was deployed here on Aug. 28.

Attached to the left rear window column is a Cisco Internet protocol phone that coordinating officer Col. Laverm Young uses to make phone calls over Defense networks when the satellite dish is up, Keenan said. When the dish is down, the call is routed through a cellular phone system that provides officelike dial-tone through a system provided by Telular Corp., based in Chicago.

An equipment rack in the response vehicle, which sits between the front and rear seats, carries four data ports that provide data connections to Defense unclassified networks and another four data ports that connect to Defense classified networks. The rack also incorporates a video teleconferencing system manufactured by Tandberg in Oslo, Norway, and a satellite television receiver with screens mounted in the rack to monitor commercial news and weather channels.

A data port panel on the outside of the vehicle provides an additional 14 connections for Defense classified and unclassified networks that officers can use to turn the vehicle into a hub for a remote command post, Keenan said. A console between the front seats sports four radios that operate on public safety bands that first responders use.

On the roof of the vehicle is an IP-based video camera transmits streaming video of the disaster area to Army North, which is headquartered at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, and other Defense commands or installations.

The Suburban also is equipped with a Global Positioning System that relays its position through a tracking system used by commercial trucking fleets and operated by Qualcomm Inc. in San Diego. The response vehicle's position is provided to Army North planners on a secure Web site.

As of Monday, the command has kept the coordinating officers and elements, as well as the response vehicles, in Baton Rouge and New Orleans to support cleanup efforts after Gustav and to prepare for the possible landfall this weekend of Hurricane Ike, said Patti Bielling, an Army North spokeswoman. Army North also has teams and response vehicles positioned in Atlanta; Austin, Texas; Clanton, Ala.; and Tallahassee, Fla., to coordinate Defense's support when Ike hits.