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

Sat Jul 28 12:31:08 EDT 2012

Hi Jon,

I don't see this on the 'Calendar of Events' at http://www.ctares.org.

Does an Echolink contact count?

          73s

                 -Tom, KD1UL

On Sat, Jul 28, 2012 at 12:11 AM, Jon Perelstein
<jon.perelstein at gmail.com>wrote:

> 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
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