They wouldn't be legally able to operate such rigs. Best bet is to give
them one band, say 2m, or 70cm.

Here's what I would do: I'd get a bunch of FRS radios and a crossband
repeater (70cm to 2m) and then put a beam on the 2 meter frequency to
the EOC or to another repeater.

That way you can have cells of users talking to each other on FRS, and the
crossband will relay their communications (with the crossband in a remote Van,
or otherwise local to the FRS users). Given a 50 watt or 150 watt amp, you
should be able to get pretty good range on 2m.

"Rude Dog" wrote
I hope members of this group can help me. I am in the Army National Guard
and I am charged with setting up emergency communications for my unit. I
need a transceiver that has a wide frequency range that can be issued to
our civilian emergency responders for commo with our land mobile units (we
cannot issue our military radios). I am looking for approximately 60 MHZ
thru 500 MHZ.

Any suggestions?