Yesterday was a great day
I got up early yesterday to drive down the the state EOC for a drill. I wasn't real happy with the way things were going. Emergency response is about 99% local, but when there is a large event the ability to connect with the state EOC is one of the key things we as amateur radio operators offer our served agencies. At the previous drill we had no contact from our partners out in the county. I had tried, and was unable, to contact the local Emergency Coordinator to get something happening. I was expecting to have a hard time telling the state agencies that we had no contact with the affected counties.
But in a surprise move, I was bailed out by the District EC. Our guy in that district is among the best of the DECs, and I was tempted to call him when I got no response from the EC, but I really hate to do that, especially in that district where the relationship between the ECs and the DEC is so good. It just doesn't look good for me to meddle. We made contact not only with the county that had the event, but also by one of the adjacent counties, one which was included in an evacuation order (remember this was a drill).
We also tried an alternative which pointed up some weaknesses, so we have some work to do, but that's why we have these drills and exercises; to learn what we need to work on.
My other agenda in going down there was to work on the packet system. We have an ancient packet system at the SEOC which very few people know how to use. I am going to need some pretty elaborate packet capability for our Simulated Emergency Test (SET) later in the month, so I had configured a system which would increase our capabilities, and I dragged it down there to test it. These systems aren't simple, and I was fully expecting to come up with a number of things to work on. I was afraid that I would discover that I just couldn't use either of the monitors we have down there and I would learn nothing. Well, it was exactly the opposite. The new system went in without a hitch. I was even able to configure it to use the ancient printer we have down there. Couldn't have been better.
Yet another item on my to-do list (if I'm spending all that gas to go to Lansing I better make it worthwhile) was to give our contact there a heads-up on our SET plans. We have some very aggressive plans for SET this year. Certainly a lot will go wrong. But the things we are trying to do this year are things we would need to do in the event of a large incident. The fellow who organizes the drills and exercises for the state has seemed to be especially interested in our program over the past few months, so I also invited him to join. I hadn't realized that he had recently been moved to a new role where his entire responsibiity is training and exercises, previously the exercise thing was a relatively small part of his job.
During the discussion, Dan volunteered to provide an evaluator for our SET. This is really wonderful news. Certainly we do these things to learn, and we do learn a lot. Having a professional exercise evaluator should significantly improve our ability to learn how to do better. Even better, he thinks he will be able to score an evaluator who has been focusing on communications. This is a two-way street. Not only do we get the benefit of a professional evaluator, but the state gets greater insight into our capabilities.
I got another gift from that discussion. Our folks are required to take a number of FEMA courses. Most are available online, and most aren't all that interesting. But you need to have some understanding of your served agencies, and with everyone in the state getting on the same page then we better get with the program if we want to be able to effectively offer our services. There are two courses that aren't avialble online. There is a three day course, followed by a two day course, and they are wonderful. Unfortunately, they are expensive. For amateur radio operators, we only suggest these courses for the section leadership, but they really are wonderful courses. I've been surprised at the number of counties that have asked their Emergency Coordinators to take this course. Counties have very limited budgets for emergency management, and these budgets need to cover firefighters, police and other public safety officials. It is a significant sacrifice for the county to fund amateurs through these courses, but obviously many counties think it is important.
Not everyone can find a sponsor, though. The courses are available in Lansing, but at a significant cost. To ask a volunteer to spend five days in class is tough; asking them to spend a lot of money on that class, to travel to the state capital, and then spend five days in a hotel just isn't reasonable. Dan essentially told me that if I find a class, he will send an instructor. Incredible when you think about it.
After a celebratory chocolate malt on the way home, I then had a phone conference with Emergency Management Ontario (EMO) and the Michigan Volunteer Defense Force (MVDF). Both have indicated an interest in participating in our SET. We needed to work out the details of that collaboration. In the past we have talked with EMO but never really got things off the ground. The MVDF thing was entirely out of the blue.
We had an outstanding discussion. It was especially interesting seeing how Ontario faces similar issues and has similar, but still different, responses. It may well be that opening up this line of communication was the greatest benefit. We decided on a relatively lightweight interface with both organizations (something of a relief since we have plenty to do for SET). For Ontario we will exchange situation reports over three different channels. This will give us a chance to understand this interface a bit better and likely open the door for greater collaboration in the future. The MVDF is primarily interested in raising awareness of amateur radio as a backup communications channel. Our interface with them will be sort of along the lines of adding their seven armories to our list of "counties", except that we will be directly contacting batallion commanders rather than usually hypothetical agency representatives.
As if my day wasn't full enough, after the phone conference which ran much longer than I expected, I got a call from one of the Division Supervisors for our SET. Very productive call.
All in all, quite an outstanding day.