The Butler County Amateur Radio Emergency Communications Team was activated to support Red Cross Damage Assessment Teams, EMA's EOC with needed information and updates, Liaison with the State EMA Office in COlumbus via a HF net, and the Butler County Sheriff's Main Dispatch & 911 Center.
Obstacles that were part of the drill: harmful and intentional interferance, bogus units checking in or requesting emergency responders, and reports of events at intersections or in area's that don't exist.
Three operators responded directly from their homes to their pre-designated assignments at the EMA, Red Cross, and the Amateur Radio Communications Center at D. Russel Lee.
The purpose of this drill
1. Make the Net Control Operator take control of the situation by setting up a callout/notification routine.
2. Assigning resources as they became available, and assigning Tactical Call Signs to eachof them.
3. Handling of Emergency, Priority, Health & Welfare Reports and formal traffic.
4. Establish Damage Evaluation Teams for Red Cross, assign them a location to go to, assign them a tactical call sign, and relay their information back to the served agency.
5.Maintain open communications with all 6 agencies invovled in the drill.
6. Sort out the request for assistance for EMS, Fire & Rescue per jurisdiction, etc.
7. Control and maintain the net(s) as needed.
The first activation came from Red Cross needing 3 teams of damage evaluators to perform preliminary evaluation of the 3 reported area's effected by the tornado's.
Damage reports included homes, businesses, township, county and state road and bridge damage, and the airports in Hamilton & Middletown were also reporting damage.
Hamilton airport was in the direct path of one funnel cand sustained damage to the runway,
navigational approach lighting, and tower damage that would takes 3-4 days to repair
suspending air traffic into or out of that facility. Middletown airport had several large tree's and debris from the local trailer park on it that would also take some time to clear.
Damage evaluations and reports went to both the EMA and Red Cross at the same time.
EMA assigned resources to assist with checking and clearing the building to ascertain no one was in them.
Red Cross opened a shelter for the stricken area and needed an amateur radio operator there for passing formal Health & Welfare messages, and shelter needs.
EMA needed communications support for 2 Urban Search And Rescue Teams that were flown in from outside the area to check collapsed buildings and search for survivors.
A hospital net was opened so field operations could keep track of bed availability at the local hospitals, notify the ER staff of inbound injured persons and the extent and type of injury. Operators were also keeping track of "walkin's transported by privately owned vehicles" as part of the overall accountability of the residence involved.
Another operator was assigned to his own home well outside of the stricken area to provide phone service, pass and accept messages via telephone, email, the internet and via other means not readily available from within the county due to the public utilities being disrupted.
The Search And Rescue Communications Officer was able to keep the EMA and Sheriff's Office up to date on all there findings, and were able to confirm reported damage via the field report units.
The communications network also allowed USAR teams to request additional resources, equipment, and special needs from the scene with a near immediate reply and estimated time of arrivable.
Problems that had to be addressed:
Content of traffic passed over the radio from the scene.
Transportation of outside resources arriving at the airport, to the scene, with dogs.
Handling harmfull, deliberate, and ficticious transmissions.
Having enough resources available to fill the served agencies request.
Prioritizing the urgency of an agency's request v.s. available man power
Field units developing radio problems.
The exercise was approximately 2 hours in duration.
This was again a learning experiance for all of the operators including the scenerio writer.
For any additional information or inquiry about this exercise, feel free to contact:
Rob McPherson - N8OMW - n8omw@hotmail.com
Bob Spratt - N8TVU - n8tvu@arrl.net
This senerio written by:
Rob McPherson N8OMW
