It's Friday December 20th and we have been getting hammered with an bad snow & ice storm all day and the National Weather Service says it will continue through midday Saturday.
By day break Saturday morning power is out in about 30% of the county including an area where several nursing homes and assisted living facilities are located.
The temperture has dropped to -10 F without factoring in the wind chill.
Multiple tree's and wires are reported down due to the heavy ice accumulations and several roads are blocked disrupting many normal routes of travel.
The Butler County Chapters of the American Red Cross activated the Emergency Communications Team at 0900 12/21/02 to assist coordinating the setting up of shelters, evacuating the care facilities and nursing homes.
Moving patients with it being -10 F degrees, plus the wind chill, and ice on every surface will make it extremely dangerous and will be a very difficult task.
Responding operators are reminded that street conditions are deplorable at best and to use extra care in getting to their assignments.
Team members that have 4X4 vehicles not normally used for daily transportation took advantage of them to help them get into the rougher area's.
The Alternate Net Control began recording operators checking into the net that were available to be assigned. The assigned Net Control Operators were sent directly to the Amateur Radio Emergency Communications Center at D. Russell Lee Vocational aka Butler Tech. (you can view the ARECC at https://sites.google.com/site/bcarecoh/arecc-radio-system )
Since this was the first time we have tried to transfer information from the ANCS to the NCS, with the phones out of order-it was a little tough going.
The first shelter communicator arrived at his assignment to find the power and heat was off in the building and could not be used.
Another operator on his way to the ARECC witnesses a vehicle slide down a railroad crossing grade and into the path of a southbound train trapping the occupants.
Several of the other operator were reporting vehicles that had slid off the roadway and were in need of a tow truck.
Visibility was bad due to the snow and ice mix freezing on contact on the glass surfaces of the responding operators.
Some of the responding operators were in need of gasoline for their vehicles and emergency generators, but many stations had no power to operate the pumps.
The phones were out in about 60% of the county. People trying to call 911 were either getting busy signals or no dial tone at all.
Operators were sent to the major local hospitals, Police Dispatch Center, and the Red Cross Chapters to help alleviate the problem with the telephone outage.
It didn't take long before Middletown Regional Hospital had to go to Diversion, which meant they were to capacity and could only treat critical cases that would have to be shipped to another hosptial for recovery.
Operators on the "Hospital Net" had to get a bed count from the hospital staff for how many beds were available for Emergency, Critical Care, and General Care patients.
TAC-1 maintained the operations for the Shelters and Evacuation effort, and another net was established to handle formal Health and Welfare traffic.
Problems that occurred that needed to be handled better by the Net Control Station:
Lessons Learned & Resolutions
One operator got a cell phone call from home that his own residence had lost power shortly after he left, and it was not back on yet. The temperture was down in the low 50's inside the house and continuing to drop. His wife has respiratory problems and the cold air was making it difficult to breath. He had to immediately abandon his post and respond to his residence.
That left a Red Cross chapter without communications. A replacement operator was never sent to Red Cross.
Some local amateur operators came on the air wonder what was going on and how they could be involved, that took up about 5 minutes air time.
Another operator involved in the drill wanted to "go direct" with another operator also involved in the drill and began discussing weather condtions, street conditions, what they were going to do once the drill was over etc.
A few more casual conversations also took place on the "controlled" net that should have been moved off frequency to a repeater designated by the Net Control Operator.
Regularly perform a Roll Call using the Tactical Call Signs.
Tactical Call Signs are used to identify a location, example, calling for "Middletown Hospital" is a lot faster than looking through your assignment sheet, scanning for a call sign associated with the hospital-only to find out when they don't answer that the operators have been changed-which is in your logs but noted on another page.
Using the Tactical Call Sign - you get the operator on duty at that facility regardless of what their amateur call is, and to signify the end of their exchange of information, will give their amateur call. That will help keep your log up to date.
Since we essentially had more than 1 net active-it becomes essential to use a headset to keep your traffic on your side of the room, and help elimiate confusion. This event we had 3 nets running. 2 on site and one off site.
Another "hint & kink", it may seem odd not to have control of every single net supporting the operation within arms reach-but that adds to the confussion, the noise and the intermod.
Our plan now consist of Tactical nets are the only one's located at the ARECC.
A "Resource" net is utilized for making assignments over the air, giving directions to the "Staging Area", giving directions to assignments, and for those at shelter's to order up supplies, equipment and food. That net control does not need to be at the ARECC.
A "Formal Message Net" is also established off site. The "FMN" operators must have access to emergency back up power, HF, VHF and UHF capabilities.
They will handle all formal traffic within the county and those messages being sent/received out side the county.
What is maintained at the ARECC is an "Administrative" net that connects all the "off site" net control stations so they can have questions answered, be directed by the Net Control Manager of the local operations, and stay fully informed about the incident itself.
This drastically cuts down on the confusion, audiable noise, RF interferance, and conjestion at the ARECC. (Amateur Radio Emergency Communications Center)
We don't mind making mistakes during a drill and posting them here. If it happens during a drill it will more than like also occur during a real ecvent-if it is allowed to.
By sharing some of the common mistakes made during our drills, we hope that this will serve as a learning tool for others as well.
It may give others an idea for their own team drills too. Feel free to use our drill formats for your own team and don't be afrain to trouble shoot your own operations!
This scenario was written by:
Ed Thornsburg KF8PD
Sandi Thornsburg AB8LA
For further information contact:
Robert Spratt - N8TVU @ arrl.net
Butler County EC
Robert McPherson - N8OMW @ hotmail.com
Butler County 1st AEC