[FLARES] Sarasota "Ex-Plan" Weapons of Mass Destruction Drill

[Ron Wetjen]

Sarasota RACES and Sarasota Emergency Radio Club members, participated
in the first Weapons of Mass Destruction Drill to be held in the State
of Florida, on December 18, 2002.  This drill was conducted by the
Federal Government, and involved various State and local agencies from
the Counties in Region Six (Southwest Florida).  All the counties in
Florida will have to do a similar drill, and each one will be graded on
their performance.

On Tuesday, December 17, working side-by-side with Emergency Service
personnel from Lee County, six Sarasota County Amateurs helped set up
and learned about a new piece of technology, called the "Emergency
Deployable Interoperable Communications System", or EDICS.  This is the
proto-type for this system, and the first time it was to be used in an
incident or drill.  Victor Cullars, KF4HXV, from the Florida Department
of Law Enforcement, FDLE, is the Communications Specialist with the
EDICS system, and transported it from Tallahassee for use in the drill.
(As I helped Victor demobilize EDICS on Thursday, he mentioned he wished
more Amateur groups would get involved like we do!)

EDICS can be called the "ultimate repeater", since it can take any input
frequency (HF, VHF, 800MHz, Satellite Telephone, etc.) and make it come
out on any output frequency.  For example, you could take someone on HF,
and give him the capability to talk to local Police on 800MHz!

On Wednesday, December 18, a simulated "chemical bomb" was detonated in
a crowd, and the drill began.  RACES and SERC members were stationed at
the EOC, the "Staging Area" (which saw 150 pieces of equipment arrive)
and the "incident" scene.  From the incident scene, two Amateur
Television (ATV) stations were used to send live video from the scene,
back to a large screen TV at the Emergency Operations Center.  This was
the first time ATV was used in a drill to send live video back to the
EOC.  Amateurs were also assigned to "shadow" key personnel.  Other
Amateurs (ARES?) provided Red Cross Communications.

The SERC 146.730 MHz was used for "Shadow" communications, while one
simplex frequency was used for "staging" and "incident" traffic, and
another was used for ATV coordination.

We've received many unsolicited comments about how well the Amateurs
performed.  The only real issue that arose, had to do with getting a
good quality, full color, picture onto the large TV display inside the
EOC.  While we were able to get a usable picture to the EOC, with what
we learned during this exercise, we should be able to improve that
situation.

Amateurs participating in the drill, include:

Al Alviani, N4LML
Jim Frey, W8ISZ
Ed Gansen, K8DSS
Eddie Palmer, K4JP
Tom Williams, WA7PYL
Glenn Alvord, KL7HX
Dave Luehr, K9DAV
Dave Armbrust, AE4MR (WCF Section Manager)
Paul Toth, NA4AR (WCF Section Emergency Coordinator)
Harvey Hernandez, N4TEC
Lee Cain, W4RIO
Roxena Doyle, W1ROX
Ken Hoffert, KV4USA
Bob Davisson, KA4BOB
George Wagner, K5KG
Ron Wetjen, WD4AHZ

Amateurs contributed 239 man-hours to this event.

73, Ron  WD4AHZ