DNC - Day 0

When Norris completed his training and certification by the Dept of Homeland Security as a Communications Unit Leader (or COML for short), his name was added to a list of 35 other COMLs in the state of North Carolina.  Being on this list means one can be deployed by North Carolina Emergency Management to disasters, large scale exercises, or major events across the state.  Since becoming certified, Norris had only been involved in several large land search exercises, but several months ago the Charlotte Fire Dept contacted Norris and asked if he would be willing to help out with Emergency Services Communications during the Democratic National Convention which was held in Charlotte earlier this week.  Norris agreed and received an assignment to serve inside the Time Warner Arena where the convention was being held.  Norris took a number of pictures throughout the week and will try to post some of them in batches over the next several days.

Many of the state's other COMLs were also in Charlotte to participate, but most of them were assigned to communications centers, command posts, and operations centers that were located well away from the arena.  Norris,and three other COMLs were the only ones assigned to a special project inside the arena.  Their job was to work with a group of FCC engineers and broadcast industry representatives to make sure that the large number of wireless microphones and cameras brought into the arena by the news media did not interfere with any of the police/fire/EMS radios systems or any of the cell phone networks in Charlotte.  The group also was responsible for coordinating the assignment of frequencies to all the wireless microphones and cameras in the arena to make sure the broadcasters did not interfere with each other.  To make sure that unauthorized transmitters were not used in the arena, spectrum analyzers and frequency counters were used to continually check the signal environment.  The job also included scanning the convention floor with binoculars looking for any microphones that didn't have the sticker indicating they had been checked and assigned an authorized channel by the team.  The team also had members walking the halls of the arena and the convention floor looking for untagged microphones and cameras.

Norris arrived in Charlotte on Sunday and checked in with the Incident Command Center to get his IDs and housing assignment.  Since all the hotel rooms in Charlotte had been booked a year in advance for the convention, Norris and the other COMLs working downtown at the arena were provided space in a vacant city office building that formerly housed the old 911 center (most of the other COMLs were housed in a tent city about 10 miles from downtown).  Cots were provided and each COML staked out an empty office as his temporary home away from home.  Norris's luxurious room is shown below with a sleeping bag and chair he brought from home

The building where the group was housed was a six block walk to the arena, which was very convenient, but unfortunately had no showers.  After one day of fighting cross-town traffic to get to a fire station to shower, the group convinced a nearby EMS station to let them use their shower and life got better.

After a fairly good night's sleep, the group walked to the arena for their training on Moday, one day before the convention started.  That date was set aside for set up and testing of the equipment of all the major broadcast networks, and to receive their frequency assignments from our group.  On the walk to the arena, the most striking thing was the overwhelming number of police officers.  Over 4000 out-of-town police from around the country had been brought in to augment the Charlotte PD.  Police were in cars, on foot, on motorcycles, on bicycles, on horseback, and in helicopters constantly circling overhead.

This horse unit was from the U.S. Park Police in Wash DC and was a familiar site for Norris.

The first order of business was getting all the security passes and credentials in order.  Below is the assortment of IDs Norris had to carry around his neck, including a Secret Service ID, a City of Charlotte ID, and a different DNC pass for every day of the week.

Security was unbelievable tight and extremely annoying.  The entire downtown area had been sealed off and fenced in creating the so-called "hard zone."

 Getting through the Secret Service metal detectors and into the area was fairly painless with the right credentials, but the security inside the arena was out of control.

You couldn't go 25 feet without someone stopping you to check your passes.  Usually three or four people standing in the same spot would all demand to check you individually.  There were many different colors of passes that denoted access to different zones within the arena and even the badge-checkers were often mistaken about what colors meant what.  It seemed like a lot of this was way beyond the Secret Service levels of security and was just a nuisance created by the Democratic Party planners for reasons that were never clear to us.

Once we got to the podium area on the convention floor, we met up with the FCC engineers and the broadcasters that were also part of our team.  Here is a shot of the podium as technicians were setting up all the major network equipment on the arena floor.  Our team can be seen at the right side of the picture, all wearing the white caps that allowed us to identify each other and allowed the media people to spot us as well.

It was quite an impressive mass of cameras, lights, and cables throughout the floor.

Pictured below, we are getting our basic training from the man on the left, who is the consultant put in charge of this effort by the broadcasters association.  He had just come from Tampa where he ran the same effort for the Republican convention.  He also did the same for both conventions in 2008, so he is the expert at this job.

After wrapping up our Day 0 training, we called it a day and headed back to our rooms.

More to follow...