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!