[CTSARA] SARA At The Statewide EPPI Hurricane Exercise

[Jon Perelstein]

Members of SARA participated in today's EPPI Hurricane Exercise at Stamford
Government Center.  The drill was a simulated Category 1 Hurricane hitting
dead center in Fairfield County.  Since Stamford, as well as the other
towns in Region One, have done this for real in two recent hurricanes
(Irene and Sandy), the City was not required to actually open shelters but
rather was allowed to conduct a table top exercise (most towns in the state
were required to open shelters).

The Stamford Advocate was there and took pictures.

http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/Stamford-practices-with-state-for-hurricane-5572995.php

and yes, in picture #7, that's SARA (and CERT) member Tom KD1UL and me with
our backs to the camera.  You can see us in a couple of the other pictures
(including one where Tom was down on his hands and knees trying to plug in
his laptop).

For the exercise, the City simulated the opening of a regional shelter at
Stamford High run by Red Cross (with CERT assistance and feeding services
by Salvation Army), evacuation of large areas of the shoreline, and all the
usual issues from the storm (trees down, power out, houses damaged, vehicle
accidents, etc.).  The State threw various curveballs into the mix (called
"injects") to which the City had to respond.  Examples include additional
flooding and last-minute emergency evacuations, fights breaking out at a
shelter, loss of communications to the shelters, a registered sex offender
in a shelter, a medical emergency at a difficult to reach eldercare
facility, etc.  No matter what the State threw at Stamford, it was
something Stamford had already faced for real in Irene and/or Sandy.

Along about lunchtime, someone in the state's Department of Emergency
Services and Public Protection got tired of Stamford responding to each
inject with the officialese equivalent of "been there, done that, got the
tee-shirt" and called to question some of the responses.  Among those he
questioned was whether or not ham radio had really provided backup comms
from the shelters during Irene and Sandy ("... after all, it's not
something that was being done in the rest of the state ...").  The EMD,
Public Safety, Public Health, Red Cross Disaster Services, and Salvation
Army all chimed in with variations of "... hell yeah they were in the
shelters ...", and "... good thing they were there ...!!!"

During the exercise, SARA sent Winlink P2P traffic between the Stamford
High shelter and the EOC and also got to fire up a Winmor HF station
(antenna set up on the roof of the Government Center parking structure) to
send email with attachments via a gateway in Nova Scotia  to the Mayor, to
the Public Safety Director, and to DESPP in Hartford.  As it turned out, we
were able to hit a Winlink VHF Packet gateway in New Haven county, so for
jollies we sent Winlink email to DEMHS in Bridgeport.

We also spent some time with Directors of Smith House and Scofield Manor
talking about adding them to the list of facilities we cover for backup
comms during events like hurricanes.  The issue is going to be the need for
roof-top antennas for those facilities in order to clear the hills and
ridges enough to hit any of our repeaters.

73s
Jon, WB2RYV