[CTSARA] 2012 SET This Weekend And Other Emcomm-Related Stuff

[Jon Perelstein]

Some of you may be aware that CT ARES is running its annual Simulated
Emergency Test (SET) this weekend.  Toy will have a net going on the
Norwalk repeater on Saturday (probably around noon).  He would appreciate
it if you would get on and at least say hello so he can count it as a
message.

As I reported previously, on Tuesday SARA will be working with GBARC,
Stamford EOC, Bridgeport EOC, Stratford EOC, and Red Cross at various
shelter locations (such as Stamford High) to do simulated shelter
communications within and between Stamford, Bridgeport, and Stratford.

*****

The SET scenario for this year is a powerful hurricane hitting CT head on
and the playbook calls for participants to send communications suitable to
a hurricane.  Based on past experience, that means people getting on their
local repeaters and making up reports that sound "hurricanish" such as
reports of trees and power lines down and reports of hail damage/flooding.
 Undoubtedly, someone will send reports of snowfall amounts (there is
always someone who doesn't quite understand the concept of hurricanes).
 The SET playbook doesn't include any specific, organized
demonstrations/testing such as our ability to get quantities of information
from one region to another, our ability to get information from the regions
to Hartford (and back), our ability to link EOCs, or ability to provide
meaningful communications from the shelters (and not just short 10 word
messages), or our HF capabilities (in case the linked repeater system fails
as it did in the October snowstorm).  The SET playbook mentions that people
might want to try some of these things, but it doesn't establish any
specific, formal, meaningful tests of those capabilities and thus can be
expected to degenerate into the typical "call in on the repeater a lot so
we can get a lot of points" as it has in previous years.

Unfortunately, CT ARES does not have suitable facilities for getting
communications from lower Fairfield County to Red Cross HQ in Farmington.
 That was tested during the 2010 SET, but the results were less than
stellar, especially since CT ARES doesn't have adequate digital capability,
doesn't have adequate HF capability, and doesn't have any HF digital
capability to speak of.  Just getting short voice messages through from
Darien Red Cross to Farmington Red Cross HQ on the linked repeater system
was painful and unreliable.

I have arranged for a ham I know to set up a portable HF antenna in the
Farmington area and I will try some HF digital communications with him
using a portable antenna from Sterling Farms (probably on Weds).  Over
time, he and I are going to experiment with NVIS antennas between here and
Farmington.

*****

I spent the last three days in ICS-400 training (at the request of the City
of Stamford based on my position in SARA and in Stamford CERT).  The other
attendees were deputy and assistant chiefs from various fire, police, and
EMS depts here in Region 1 (Stamford, Darien, Norwalk, Westport,
Bridgeport, and Wilton).  A couple of full chiefs were there for at least
part of the time as were two mayors (well a mayor and a first selectman).

ICS-400 focuses on BIG events/incidents, region or county wide (even
multiple regions/counties) and this class was taught by some seriously
experienced people (e.g., a retired senior incident commander from US
Forest Service Fire and Aviation Management -- the people who fight the
really big forest fires out west).  Not quite believing us when we told
them that CT municipalities handle big emergencies pretty much on their
own, the "desktop simulation exercise" they set up for Day 3 of the class
was a massive, unexpected snowstorm the Saturday before Christmas with
thousands of cars stranded on I-95 between Stamford and Bridgeport, at
least 10 trains stranded on Metro North between Stamford and Bridgeport,
many many traffic accidents throughout lower Fairfield County (including at
least one with a really nasty hazardous material spill on Rt. 7 in Wilton),
a roof caved in on one of the big box stores in Norwalk (full of holiday
shoppers), etc., etc.  In short, what happens at least once a year in
northern NY, the midwest, or the upper west.

It took about an hour, but they finally got people to understand the value
of working together across municipalities in a situation like that posed in
the simulation.  Of course, as soon as people started accepting the idea,
the instructors threw in power failures and phone/cell phone outages that
isolated the EOCs.  At which point the participants all agreed that they
simply had no way to communicate with each other and would have to fall
back on individual responses by municipality.

"Well there IS ham radio" said guess who.  The instructors stopped the
exercise and we spent about 45 minutes talking about what ham radio can do
for local and regional communications, with the instructors pointing out
that in Texas, each municipality's emergency plans must include specific
planning for use of ham radio (or the TX Dept of Public Safety will reject
the plans as inadequate -- something that has serious legal and political
ramifications).  We talked about the capabilities of the ham radio
community here in lower Fairfield, as well as the strengths and weaknesses
of CT ARES (they were not amused).

When we did continue the exercise, the various chiefs chose to use ham
radio as a critical communications resource between the EOCs.  Sufficiently
critical that most of the municipalities represented elected to each pull a
plow out of immediate response to gather up ham radio operators and bring
them to their EOCs, and every coordinating message they sent for the rest
of the exercise went through (simulated) ham radio.

The Wilton fire chief is going to work with Chris Munger to organize a
follow-up meeting between the various municipalities to further discuss how
they can work together in a really big incident.  Ham radio (i.e., me) has
already been invited to the meeting.


73s
Jon, WB2RYV

P.S.  Seriously, please take pity on Toy and give him a call on Saturday