Heidi La Quadra, Communications

The view from the radio room at a recent night navigation

The first three weeks of August were busy with several safety patrols and QEs but some patrols and a QE had to be cancelled when storm fronts moved in. For August, we had patrols out for six days with a total of nine facilities on patrol. We had two days of QE with two night navigations but the second night navigation had to be cancelled because of weather.

  A Rescue 21 watch request call came from Station Fort Myers Beach to cover during an unexpected outage. We were able to respond and have a watchstander in the radio room in under an hour. 

The watchstanders for August were La Quadra, Harris, and Smith. Richard Brant has been assisting as a trainee and has been a welcome addition to the radio room.  We expect to have more of our regular watchstanders back on duty soon so we can spread the responsibilities and no one gets burned out. We’re keeping an eye on the radar and hoping the storms don't stall too many more patrols