With everything going on due to the COVID-19 outbreak, I thought it prudent to post some information about a report that we use often in MARS during emergency situations and has been requested recently during our regional nets. When requested, MARS members are to attempt to obtain the specified information from specific sources including; commercial broadcasts, EAS/IPAWS alerts, government officials (other than EAS/IPAWS), or Amateur Radio operators.

The County Status Report follows a very specific format and attempts to identify the status of infrastructure and critical services within the specified location. The report is formatted as follows:

FIPS#:
Date/Time(UTC): DDHHMM
Power: Y (Yes, fully functional), R (rolling blackout/planned outages), P (partial blackout, unplanned), B (brownout, unplanned), N (No, complete blackout, unplanned)
Water: Y (yes, fully functional), P (partial, unplanned interruption in parts of county), C (contaminated, water service is available but should not be used), N (No, complete unplanned interruption)
Sanitation: Y (yes, fully functional), P (Partial, unplanned interruption in parts of the county), N (complete, unplanned interruption)
Medical: Y (Yes, fully functional staffed hospitals with all levels of care available), P ( partial, unplanned decrease in capacity due to loss of facilities), R (Partial, unplanned decrease in capacity due to loss of personnel), F (Full, facilities are at maximum capacity and cannot handle additional patients), N (No, facilities are unusable due to loss of personnel or infrastructure)
Communications: Y (Yes, fully functional government and commercial communications), P (Partial, commercial communications out but civil government communications are operational), N ( No, complete loss of commercial and government com