SET Recap

Tonight I’ll share a my thoughts on the countywide emergency test held last Thursday in conjunction with the Great Utah Shakeout. The group that gathered at the Newton Town hall was a combination of operators from the EOC staff and some of the communications specialists from the local congregations in the Benson Stake.

Using the Cache County Community Disaster Impact form, we simulated the effects of the earthquake for Newton Town and surrounding area. Even though we were entering our simulated data rather quickly, I was reminded that in a real emergency the process of finding out what has occurred and compiling the report will take a significant amount of time. Until the full assessment is available to send by the easiest mode of communication available, as an attachment to an email, or by Winlink during a communication systems outage, passing emergency mmessages between organizations can be accomplished over voice channels. If we receive a specific request for less urgent information before the full impact report is ready, consider sending a response using the ICS 213 General Message form via email or Winlink to quickly send on what we do know, when it is needed. Again, it is important to note that information not critical to life safety can wait until the appropriate form is compiled and ready to send, freeing up the voice channels for emergency traffic. When it comes to passing messages with packet radio during a wide-scale emergency, expect the process to take some time. At Newton we had such significant delays sending our Winlink messages we were not able to spend much time practicing sending messages over the voice channels. If we had more gateway sites available throughout the area it would help, but access issues could be managed somewhat by reducing the size of attachments to Winlink messages as much as possible, and sending one message or small groups of messages at a time, minimizing the delay for other EOCs looking for access to the gateway system. I want to thank all of the net members who were able to join us for the exercise, as well as thank all of you for the consistent participation in our monthly net meetings. It is great to see your willingness to be a resource to your communities!

SET: Final Coordination

This afternoon I attended the final coordination meeting for Thursday's exercise. I'm excited for this opportunity to test our ability to send and receive messages between orgnaizations digitally and by voice, and encourage all who are willing to join in. 

The goal of the scenario is to play as if normal modes of communication are not available, requiring us to use amateur radio frequencies for voice and data communications, as much as possible. Here is the timeline of the exercise, with comments about how we could play:

17:30 hrs: Cache County EOC has been activated. EOC Staff have been sent notifications to deploy to their positions at the EOC. Cache County Sheriff’s Ecomm operators have activated the emergency tones on the BARC Repeater System and will be taking check in's from Emergency Communications Centers on Command 2 (146.720 - the VHF side of the Mount Logan Repeater) for those willing and able for deployment.

Around 5:30 p.m., radio operators in Newton will receive a notification that the Newton Emergency Operations Center will be activated. If you receive a notification and are able to join us at the EOC, please bring a short-term go kit - a radio and something to write with, as a minimum.

As operators arrive, we will activate the EOC and open a radio net on our NWCV net split channel, the same configuration used for our monthly training net. If you are from outside Newton, or a Newton operator who cannot join us at the EOC, if you are able to join us on the radio net please check in at this time.

After we have completed the initial check in of operators not responding to the EOC, and listed the operators who did respond, we will ask all stations to monitor the net frequency and we will come back periodically to ask for situation reports and resource requests.

If you are playing as a Ward Communication Specialist, skip down to the section detailing how to respond in that capacity.

Individual operators not joining us a the Newton EOC:

If you are in this category and have checked in to the voice net, please continue to monitor the net frequency and we will ask you to report your personal status for a variety categories, found on the Community Disaster Impact / Situation Report. If you have access to Winlink, you are welcome to complete the form and send it as an attachment to the address NEWTONUTECC@winlink.org. If you do not have digital capability, we will call for your voice responses over the net frequency when we resume voice communications.

Operators playing as Newton EOC staff:

After checking in to the initial net, EOC to EOC communications will switch to 147.520 simplex, or digital messages sent by Winlink. As we will also run the local net, the voice radio will continue to monitor the NWCV Net split channel as well as this EOC to EOC frequency.

The operators from Newton who have joined us at the EOC will work to prepare a response to the requests the county will send our way:

The county will request a Community Disaster Impact / Situation Report from our EOC. With this form we will submit a simulated message answering the categories on the form. This form will be completed and saved as a .pdf form which we will send by Winlink.

We will also receive a request from the county to provide a simulated status report for Newton Reservoir. For this request we will likely respond with the ICS 213 General Message Form, found in Winlink.

While these aspects are covered by the Community Disaster Impact report, it is possible that we will receive follow up requests to identify the need of volunteers in our community, as well as the ability to provide volunteers to other communities, and the need for shelters of persons who were displaced by the earthquake. We will respond to these with the ICS 213 General Message Form.

After we respond to the injects requested from the county, if we choose to do so we can send resource requests to the County, or if the need would be better served by communicating with a faith based organization, we can send the message that direction.

Voice and digital messages will continue to pass back and forth between organizations until approximately 19:30 hrs, at which time a brief after action review of the exercise will occur with an expected close of the exercise at 20:00 hrs.

Ward Communication Specialists:

Please prepare a simulated neighborhood assessment following the Church’s three “M’s” reporting procedure for emergencies: namely “members, missionaries, and meetinghouses”. Whether you will use Winlink, or report the information by voice over the net frequency during the exercise, please use this Disaster Report Form as a guide for the report.

If you will be sending your report by Winlink, use the address of BENSONSTKUT@winlink.org. If you will not be using Winlink you can read the information over the air during when requested by net control. If you will not be available to report the information over the air, please send the form by regular email to that same email address in advance of the exercise.

Once your simulated assessment has been submitted, if you desire you can send a resource request to the same Winlink address for the Stake, or read the request over the air when net control calls for resource requests. If you use Winlink, the ICS 213 General Message Form can be used to type out your request. 

A request from your ward could include a request for volunteers to help remove debris from damaged structures, or a request for a plumber to help repair damage from an unsecured water heater in a residence, as a couple of examples. Or a notice could be sent to the stake indicating you have "X" number of volunteers who are available to help if a need exists in another ward.

Please contact me if you have questions about the exericse, messages, or how you can join in by email to greg.fabricius@gmail.com.

SET Additional Information

As the day of the Simulated Exercise Test approaches, the amateur Operators from Newton are planning an in-person meeting for Thursday evening, April 11, at 7:00 p.m. in the training room at the Newton Town Hall. If you are a radio operator from another community in the Northwest Cache County area that is not participating in the exercise and want to join us at the meeting, you are welcome.

The criteria for the exercise will follow the State’s recommendation on the Great Utah Shakeout website of a 5.7 magnitude earthquake centered on the east side of the valley, with no fatalities in Cache County, and only 4 homes in the county sustaining unlivable damage. While the scenario does not specify significant loss of life or severe damage, the opportunity to test communications between the participating organizations should not be diminished by the scenario criteria.

This exercise will be managed as if the more common modes of communication are not viable because of the earthquake. This means we will be using radio frequencies for voice communication, and packet radio modes for digital communications.

For all operators  joining us over the radio on the night of the exercise, the NWCV Net frequency assignment will be used for voice communications. I will have the cross-band repeat function enabled.

If you do not have the cross-band channel programmed to your radio, please do so before the 18^th. I can help if needed. The receive frequency is 147.420 MHz, with a transmit frequency of 446.500 MHz. If you are not able to program a split channel, please use 147.420 simplex. No tone is needed for access.

Shortly after 5:30 on the evening of the 18^th, the Newton EOC will be activated. Once we have checked in with the Cache County EOC our operators will tune to the NWCV Net frequency and ask for stations in Newton and the other NWCV Net communities to check-in to the net, including radio operators from the units in the Benson Stake.

For radio operators from Newton:

If you are not participating as a Ward Communication Specialist, you are invited to participate as an EOC staff member. Additional details on how the rest of the exercise will proceed for the Newton EOC will be available at the meeting on the 11^th.

For Ward Communications Specialists:

After voice check in is complete, each ward in the stake is encouraged to transmit a simulated neighborhood assessment to the Stake Communication Specialist using amateur radio as the mode of communication. Follow up messages in the form of resource requests, or offers to supply volunteers to other units, etc., are also encouraged. You may use the details in your initial neighborhood assessment as the basis for resource requests, also sent by radio transmission.

More information on transmitting your neighborhood assessment is down below. Now, lets discuss the message content. The Initial neighborhood assessment should follow the Church’s three “M’s” reporting procedure for emergencies: namely “members, missionaries, and meetinghouses”.

For this exercise, each unit could include the total number of people living within the ward boundary – specifying a separate number of full-time missionaries living within the ward boundary - and a simulated status of those two categories of individuals. This simulated report could specify several people with injuries and some detail about the extent of injuries, or simply state all are safely accounted for.

In addition to the status of persons, the neighborhood assessment should include structural damage reports of the residences within the ward boundary. Again, there is an opportunity to report minor or moderate damage to a certain number of residences, for example.

Lastly, any unit with a meetinghouse within its boundary is to submit a simulated status report for the meetinghouse – simulating damage, or none.

The LDS Church Disaster Report or an ICS 213 form can be used to record your simulated assessment. These forms are fillable and can be saved as .pdf files in advance of the exercise.

Winlink is the preferred mode of communication for these assessment messages, as specified by the exercise planners. A computer with an internet connection is all you need to send Winlink messages, and for this exercise the Telnet mode is okay. If you need assistance setting up Winlink on a computer, contact me, or see this post for instructions.

There are some Ward Communications Specialists who are not licensed amateurs. If this applies to your ward, inkeeping with the goal of the exercise to operate as if normal modes of communication are not available, please work with me and I will reach out to known radio operators in your ward to see if they are willing to transmit the messages you have prepared by Winlink, or over the voice channel in use for the exercise.

Winlink messages from the Ward Communications Specialists should be sent shortly after 6 p.m. the night of the exercise, addressed to BENSONSTKUT@winlink.org, with the completed form attached.

If you are a Ward Communication Specialist who is a licensed operator, or a radio operator helping a non-radio licensed specialist but will not be able to use Winlink over telnet or one of the packet modes, you can read the message content from the prepared form over voice frequency on the night of the exercise. Voice messages containing the neighborhood assessment will be called for on the net frequency after the initial check ins are complete.

If no radio operator is available for your ward, we still want your response. You can email your completed assessment form as an attachment to BENSONSTKUT@winlink.org. These messages can be sent in advance of the 6:00 p.m. call for Winlink or voice responses.

After your initial assessment is submitted over radio by Winlink or voice, or by regular email, a follow up message from your ward could include a request for volunteers to help remove debris from damaged structures, or a request for a plumber to help repair damage from an unsecured water heater in a residence, as a couple of examples. Or a notice could be sent to the stake indicating you have X number of volunteers who are available to help if a need exists in another ward.

Once received by the Stake Communications Specialist, the neighborhood assessments and resource requests will be evaluated, and forwarded to the appropriate agencies – the Bishop’s Storehouse, a city communication center, or to the county communications center. Replies to the messages received will go back to the ward level.

I hope you will be able to join us for the exercise. If there are questions about the exercise or the messages requested, please join us for the in-person meeting on the 11^th at 7:00 p.m., or contact me by email via greg.fabricius@gmail.com, or by phone 435-757-3330.

Simulated Exercise - April 18, 2024

In conjunction with the Great Utah Shakeout held in April of each year, Cache County Emergency Services is planning an exercise to allow emergency communications teams (faith-based, city/town and the county emergency communications center) to exercise their Ecomm plans and see how they interact with each other. 

This exercise will be managed as if the emergent level of the P.A.C.E. plan (Primary, Alternate, Contingent, Emergent) is in effect for communications - using radio frequencies for voice communication, and packet radio modes for digital communications.

The P.A.C.E. plan for the area covered by the NWCV Net is the Benson Stake plan (the communities of Amalga, Benson, Clarkston and Newton). The plan diagram is displayed at the end of this post, with frequencies included. The Newton EOC will be activated and will use the Benson Stake P.A.C.E. plan for this exercise. In short, we will use the monthly radio net frequencies - simplex and cross-band.

Radio operators who are not yet associated with a city/town communications team or faith-based communications team are encouraged to reach out to their local community organizations to see how they can join in the exercise. For radio operators residing in the northwest section of the county who do not have a city or town or faith-based affiliation, we welcome you to join us.

If you do plan to join us on the 18th, please contact me and we can work out some simulated messages you could use to incorporate in the exercise.

Background:

Cache County will use the scenario posted on the Great Utah Shakeout website as the criteria of the incident:

The scenario is based on loss modeling provided by Hazus-MH and ground motion modeling (ShakeMaps) provided by the University of Utah Seismograph Stations. Maps providing a representation of the severity of the earthquake in the scenario are available for download here.

Timeline:

April 18th, 2024

10:15 hrs: Earthquake near Logan Utah. Initial assessment of the quake is reported to be 5.7 Magnitude. Assessments are being made, with reports of some buildings being damaged. The extent is not known at this time.

17:30 hrs: Cache County EOC has been activated. EOC Staff have been sent notifications to deploy to their positions at the EOC. Cache County Sheriff’s Ecomm operators have activated the emergency tones on the BARC Repeater System and will be taking check in's on Command 2 for those willing and able for deployment.

18:00 hrs: City stations, faith-based groups and unincorporated area stations will start sending            digital messages between their respective organizations and to the Cache Emergency                                Communications Center. For stations without digital capability, please relay assessment data via voice channels.

Voice and digital messages will continue to pass back and forth between organizations until approximately 19:30 hrs, at which time a brief after action review of the exercise will occur with an expected close of the exercise at 20:00 hrs.

Objectives for the exercise:

1. Activate the county emergency communication plan.

• At 17:30 hrs, County Ecomm operators will open a net on Command 2 (146.720, negative offset, 103.5 tone) and participating stations will check in.
• Voice traffic between emergency communication centers will move to the EOC Intercom frequency (147.520 simplex). Digital communication will use established packet frequencies.
• The coordination of additional frequencies, and non-message traffic (general broadcasts from communication operators) will occur on Command 1 (147.200, positive offset, 103.5 tone).

The full Ecomm plan for Cache County is linked here. Frequency lists begin on page 3.

2. Develop a group of injects (messages that are used to drive the simulation) allowing participating organizations to exercise their Ecomm plans.

• Faith-based organizations communicate with each other.
• City/town organizations communicate within their organization and to the county emergency communications center.
• Faith-based organizations communicate with the city/town communications centers and the county emergency communications center.
• Faith-based organizations and the County ECC may pass messages to government or faith-based emergency communicators located outside of the county.

At the beginning of the exercise, the county will request impact reports from the city/town centers. City/town centers participating may use the simulated damage reports they send in to the county as a basis for follow-up resource requests.

Faith-based organizations are encouraged to complete a neighborhood survey for their congregations and report the findings to the next level of their organization, and likewise, submit resource requests based on their initial reports through those same channels.

As resource requests are received at city/town centers, or betwen operators of a faith-based organization, emergency managers are encouraged to determine the best source to obtain the needed resources, and submit the requests to that source through the established path of communication. Some requests are better managed by faith-based organizations, such as a need for food and other commodities or volunteers, vs. requests for fire and medical responders, or heavy machinery, which may better be handled by local government.

This coordination between faith-based organizations and government would happen at the stake level of the LDS Church organization, for example. At this level, the Stake Emergency Manager can reach out to the city/town center(s) where congretations are centered, or to the County center, and vice-versa.

During this exercise, initial damage reports will be formatted using the Cache County Disaster Impact / Situation Report and the ICS 213 General Message form. These forms can be sent as attachments to a Winlink message, or can be read back over voice frequencies.

Requests for assistance will be sent with the ICS 213 Resource Request form, or ICS 209 Incident Status Summary, directed to the county from a city/town center, or between operators of faith-based organizations, transmitted by Winlink, or read over a voice channel.

Forms

The following forms are fillable on a computer and can be attached to a Winlink message for submission. If Winlink is not available, the forms can be completed, then transmitted by voice message.

Community Disaster Impact / Situation Report

This is a Cache County form created with Google docs. It may be necessary to make a copy of this form on your local computer in order for it to be fillable.

ICS 213 General Message Form

ICS 213 Resource Request Form

ICS 209 Incident Status Summary

If you would like to implement Winlink over telnet as part of your participation, please review the Winlink installation post on this site. I am available to help with any questions. Contact me by email at greg.fabricius@gmail.com, or by phone at 435-757-3330.

P.A.C.E. plan