[CTSARA] Hams needs for Army Mars drill - Sunday/Monday

[Paul Lourd]

To all local hams!

 

Army MARS is conducting a two day national exercise starting this Sunday
evening (Oct 26) into Tuesday evening (Oct 28).  The concept of the exercise
is that standard long-haul communications have been damaged by a natural
disaster or terrorist act and U.S. Northern Command is using MARS to move
status information from the stricken areas to FEMA (standard practice in
widespread communications outages).  

 

As part of that exercise, MARS would like to simulate having its members
gather information from amateurs (especially ARES trained) via local
repeaters.

 

The information to be collected for this exercise is simply the amateur
station's current county location (just county).  We understand that
technically speaking CT does not have county government, but for disaster
reporting the state does distinguish between counties such as Fairfield, New
Haven, New London, etc.

 

The specific text of the message will be 

 

"All stations on this frequency this is <amateur callsign> looking for
stations to report their current county location. These reports are part
of a nationwide  MARS / Department of Defense exercise. We want to know
what counties we are able to communicate with in an emergency. Please
call now this is <Amateur callsign> OVER"

 

PLEASE if you hear this announcement, take the time to answer. That is all
that is required! The announcement may come anytime during the 48 hour test.

 

Thank you,

 

Paul, WB2JVB

ARES Region 1 DEC