[FLARES] Sarasota County Damage Assessment Exercise - Nov. 28, 2007

[Ron Wetjen]

Members of the Sarasota County Auxiliary Communications Service (ACS)
participated in a "Damage Assessment" exercise on Wednesday, November
28, 2007.

For about 2 years, ACS has been assisting with local Community Emergency
Response Team (CERT) training, by teaching the communications class
(which we developed as part of the local CERT training program).  We've
also been using that opportunity to promote ham radio, and do some
recruiting to get CERT team members licensed, so they have backup
communications, should the phones go down.  During our presentations,
the questions that come up the most, are "who are we going to talk to
and what information are we going to give them?"

Over the past several months, ACS has been working with Emergency
Management and the County Damage Assessment folks, to develop a plan
to get immediate post storm damage report information from the field
back to the Damage Assessment folks.  This will allow them to make plans
and know where to send their people, once the "all clear" is given for
them to head out.  We thought this would be a good opportunity for CERT
and other neighborhood associations with their own neighborhood disaster
plan, to provide this information from "ground zero" immediately after a
storm.  A form was developed for the CERT and neighborhood teams to use,
to gather needed information, and then call or radio that information to
the the Damage Assessment folks.

We also needed a way to get that information from the field, to the Red
Cross (where the Damage Assessment folks would be working from), and to
the EOC.  We initially thought about using packet to do that, but then
started looking at Winlink, which allows you to send e-mail (with
attachments) via packet to other Winlink users or to a regular e-mail
address.  This system could be used to send the reports between the EOC
and Red Cross ... or better yet, directly via e-mail to the folks who
need the information.  So, we set up a local Telpac (Internet to packet)
gateway at the EOC and several ACS members started playing with the
Airmail program ... which is the program used to compose, send, and
receive messages (directly from the Internet or via RF and
then to the Internet).

We were then invited to participate in a Damage Assessment exercise, and
decided to test our Winlink capabilities.  As part of the drill, we
wanted to try and collect damage assessment reports from teams in the
field, radio those into the "Command Post", and send those out via
packet, and have the County folks receive them as an e-mail.

Teams doing the actual Damage Assessment, included the City of North
Port, North Port CERT, Hardee County Code Enforcement, Hardee County
Community Housing, Manatee County Red Cross, Sarasota County CERT,
Sarasota County Emergency Management Neighborhood Disaster Plan group,
and the Southwest Florida Red Cross (Sarasota).

We had three folks positioned around the Damage Assessment site (an old
and abandoned Trailer park) to collect the forms from the teams, compile
the numbers, and report those to the Command Post.  We set up two of our
"jump kits" at our Command Post.  One station would collect the reports
on voice, the other station would be connected to a laptop and TNC to
compose and send the reports out via packet.

Once we started to receive reports, we took the information from the
forms and used a word document "template" similar to the form, to fill
in the reported information.  We then sent a completed form via 2 Meter
packet with Airmail.  One of the recipients of the e-mail was set up
with his wireless Internet on the next table, while another was at the
EOC.  We heard a "got it" when he received the reports on the next table
and got an acknowledgment e-mail from the EOC as well.

All seemed to be working well ... and then things started to happen!  We
began having trouble connecting to the Winlink servers ... either the
Internet from the EOC was acting up ... or the servers themselves were!
We started trying to troubleshoot, but were limited in what we could
do from the field.  I called up to the EOC to have them reboot the
Telpac program, but that didn't fix the problem.  Not being able to
reliably send e-mail anymore, we decided to go to "Plan B".  Since we
lso had Airmail up and running at the Red Cross, we decided to connect
directly to the Red Cross and send reports there directly via RF.
Since that was where the Damage Assessment team would be stationed, they
would still be able to get the reports ... even if the Internet wasn't
working - as happened during our exercise!

After the drill, we found out that both the County Internet AND the
Winlink servers were acting up at generally the same time ... right in
the middle of our exercise!  But ... we also proved, even with the
problems ... we were still able to move traffic from a disaster site.

This was our first attempt at using Winlink for any type of emergency
work, and we were very pleased with how things worked.  We knew going
in, relying entirely on the Internet is a bad idea, but that's as far as
we've been able to go.  Even before the exercise, we were planning on
setting up backup RF links as well as setting up several more Telpac
gateways in the County to be able to cover more area and to serve as
backups, should one go down.  Finding locations and equipment to do
this, will be one of our future projects.

ACS members participating in this exercise, include:

Bob, KA4BOB
Bob, K9SRQ
Eddie, K4JP
Doug, KG4QCR
Ron, WD4AHZ

By the way ... this Damage Assessment plan being developed in Sarasota,
is one of the first in the state.  Several other Florida Counties have
already contacted Sarasota County to use this as a model for their
Damage Assessment plans.  Using Amateur Radio and CERT as part of this
plan, emphasizes the importance of these resources.  We're hoping
adoption of this plan in other areas, may help open doors for local
ARES, RACES, or ACS groups who may not have the same working
relationship with their County, that we have here.

73,

Ron, WD4AHZ
EC, Sarasota County ACS
www.saracs.org