On Saturday October 14, 2023 members of the Saginaw County ARES group participated in a local and State of Michigan simulated emergency exercise. The purpose of this exercise was to test alternative ways of communtions between different county locations to county Winlink staions and pass the information via Winlink to the EOC.
Scenario:
The State of Michigan is in the grips of a record-breaking heat wave.
Temperatures have remained above 90 degrees for more than 7 days. Severe
weather moved across the state with damaging winds, which spawned tornadoes
affecting communities across the entire state.
1. Numerous trees and powerlines are blocking many roads.
2. There are hurricanes in the southern US that are causing delays for
mutual aid requests for power and infrastructure restoration.
Local Response:
- Assisting in EOC operations and communications between Bay, Midland and other counties to Saginaw county and the state EOC
- Providing communication support for cooling stations (location EM provide)
- Providing communication support for local hospital (support from Covenant)
- Monitoring down power lines and road obstructions (operators from “home” stations)
The Saginaw County 911 radio room was activated along with the station a
Covenant ER. There was a request to man 2 shelters because of the storms.
Normal communication was spotty so both 2-meter voice and Winlink were set
up to pass information. Many ICS-213 and resource requests were passed to
the EOC where a response was obtained and a reply was sent. The state EOC
added 3 situation updates to the exercise to test our new PACE pland and
information was fed to the MICIMS state data system.
We had a great response from our Emergency Management office, 911, Covenant and MMR. Thanks for all your input to the exercise.
Congratulations to all that participated
Participants:
Ron Huss, KC8YVF
Mike Dougherty, KD8MMH
Greg Smith, KE8WXJ
Tom Schmidt, N8EUI
Fred Bolger, KE8QCO
Jeff Weirauch, KC8BDQ
Gordy Schram, KC8YVD
Rick Schattilly, KC8VOA
Jeff Metiva, KB8SWR
Dave Paquette, W8DW
Metrics
- Over 400 volunteers and agency personnel participated, including 72 from outside the AUXCOMM community.
- 57 of the volunteers were new or were returning after 3 or more years’ absence.
- 22 counties submitted reports.
- All 7 districts were represented.
Overall, the exercise was well received. A couple of deltas noted are that:
- Some counties still need help obtaining access to MI CIMS.
- Some counties need assistance with learning to use Winlink forms. A few sent their message as a plain text message, and one sent a fillable PDF.
- A number of counties posted their PACE plans online as directed, but they did not check the box to mark them as external. This restricted access to only their county.
SCORING
Photos from the exercise
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