By mid day Friday the storm passed. Area rainfall had not been as heavy as expected, so there were only a few reports of any flood damage.
Saturday morning was a bright sunny day with 65-70 degrees.
The point is-the scenario could happen-it almost did.
We had 11 participants in the drill that was designed to "hammer" the Net Control Operator with reports from the area, updates from the State EMA office, Local EMA office, 2 Red Cross Chapters, and to fill the room with as much confussion and radio traffic that we could muster up.
The script also had all the mistakes and flaws that we could think of, the "don't ever really do this" kind of stuff, editorializing the situation, etc.
Our net control operator has been NCO one other time on a casual net.
Lori W8LKU did a great job. She was the NCO and logger at the same time!
She started off a little shaky right at first, but her coach Bill Moore W8KVU simply told her-
don't let them run you-YOUR in control. (then the WIFE came out in her)
From that point forward Lori straighted everyone out, slowed them to a pace she was comfortable with, and kept control of the net.
What we had tried to do in this exercise was to simulate 10 operators in the field all anxiously trying to get their multiple messages and reports through to the net control, pretty much all at once.
Oh I forgot to mention, we had a camcorder running in the net control station so the guy's in the field can see what caused some of the delays in a response from the NCS.
We feel it is very important for the field operators to "SEE" what is going on inside the NCS to help them understand the operations.
In our debriefing immediately following the SET all of the participants had great input as to what changes need to be made to make the reporting easier, smoother, and take less air time.
Matt KB8DDH, Bill W8KVU, Elmer KC8KEY and several of the other members discussed procedures that need to be implemented and practiced to improve the message handling and to simplify the overall emergency communications "exchange".
Jim WA8SDF and Red W8ULC had ideas to improve the way the maps can be marked, changed, and kept up to date without damaging the map. Also how to update the map with road closures, restricted areas, bridge outages, utility outages, color coded so at a quick glance we can "SEE" whats going on for informing EMA-Red Cross- and other officials as to the situation.
I would like to thank the following operators that participated in making this a great learning and educational experiance:
Jim Barrie - WA8SDF
Elmer Harbron - KC8KEY
Lorie Urschel - W8LKU
Matt Hoffman - KB8DDH
Thomas Collins - KC8UFS
Kim Mackey - KC9BZL
William Moore - W8KVU
Robert Spratt - N8TVU
Rob McPherson - N8OMW
Red Dakin - W8ULC
Raimundo Molina Baez - KC8UTS
Senerio written by:
Robert Spratt N8TVU
n8tvu@arrl.net
