Great Utah Shakeout 2025

The annual "Great Utah Shakeout" exercise is planned for Thursday, April 17, 2025. This exercise simulates a 5.7 Richter scale earthquake event centered in Cache County, and will involve most of the communities in Cache County where amateur radio operators will test their ability to communicate with the County Emergency Operations Center by transmitting voice and data messages over radio frequencies.

President Flygare has approved an emergency communications test for the Wards in the Benson Stake, to be held on that same date. The purpose of the exercise is to become familiar with the Church Disaster Report form, and if at all possible to use emergency modes of communication to submit a Disaster Report to the Stake Emergency Communications Specialist - following this timeline:

Before April 17th:

The Emergency Preparedness and Emergency Communications Specialists of each Ward in the Stake are to prepare a simulated Disaster Report on the Church created form, available via this link: Disaster Report Form.

This is a .pdf fillable form that is to be used when a disaster occurs, allowing each ward to submit the effects of the disaster event at the ward level, an earthquake in this case, to the Stake.

In an actual emergency, the information submitted to the Stake on the Disaster Report will come from the household assessments described in Step 3 of the emergency planning process, Outline Assignments & Procedures, where each household is visited/contacted after the event has occured to account for persons and assess damage to residences. Every meeting house should also be evaluated for damage. Additionally, it is helpful to report the overall effect on the community, such as the status of utilities, communications systems, and roadways.

In addition to completing the reporting process from Ward to Stake, this information helps your Ward Emergency Manager know who may need medical help and/or shelter assistance, allowing them to formulate a plan to respond.

Since this is an exercise, each Ward can decide the level of injuries and damage they wish to report. If your estimation is that not much damage or injury has occured, at a minimum, please report the total number of households in your ward boundary in the "additional details" field of the report. This number is to include member and non-member households. The Ward Clerk is a resource to consult for this information.

Once the report entry is complete, please save the report as a .pdf, to be submitted on the date of the exercise.

Thursday, April 17, 2025:

The exercise for the Benson Stake will begin at approximately 6:00 p.m. on the 17th. At that time, I will open a radio net on the primary amateur frequencies used by the Benson Stake, 147.420 MHz. Stations wishing to do so may use the cross band channel with an input of 446.500 Mhz, just like we do for our monthly radio net meetings.

A roll-call check in will commence, ward by ward. When checking in, each ward will identify which of the following communication methods will be used to submit their Disaster Report:

1. Winlink:

If your ward has a licensed radio operator serving as an Emergency Communications Specialist, we encourage using Winlink to submit the form with BENSONSTKUT as the recipient of your message. If you do not have computer to radio interface equipment at this time, a Winlink telnet connection to send the message is perfectly acceptable.

**In order to submit the Disaster Report using Winlink, the Winlink compatible reporting forms must be installed on the computer that will be used. If you plan to use Winlink for this exercise, please get in touch with me as soon as possible by phone or by email.

For the Wards who will use Winlink to submit their report, after the initial roll call is complete, net control will send a Winlink request for a Disaster Report to those wards.

2. Voice using radio frequencies:

If you are amateur licensed but are not able to submit by Winlink, or are GMRS licensed only, reading your report over radio frequencies will be the next communication method we want to test.

**If you are GMRS licensed but not amateur licensed and we have not been in contact, please let me know in advance of the 17th by a text or an email.

After the initial roll-call check in is complete, net control will call one at a time for each ward who will use amateur frequencies to submit their report, and copy down the information as it is read over the air on the net frequencies described above. 

After we have received the disaster reports from wards using the primary net frequency, we will switch to a pre-determined GMRS frequency and make a call for any wards who have identified GMRS as the method they will use to submit their report. 

3. Submitting by email

For Wards that do not check in by radio, or do not have a radio operator assigned as their Emergency Communications Specialist, after the initial roll call over radio frequencies is complete, a text message will be sent to the Emergency Preparedness and Emergency Communications Specialists of these wards, requesting they send their prepared Disaster Report form to an email address that will be included in the text message.

**If internet email is not available during an actual emergency, wards who do not use radio operators as Emergency Communications Specialists would complete the reporting step by hand-delivering the prepared form to the Stake command post. For the purpose of this exercise we will allow internet emailed reports instead of requiring hand delivery.

When all participating wards have submitted a response by one of the communications methods listed above, the radio net will be closed and the exercise will be complete.

An after-action review will be held during the regularly scheduled radio net on Sunday, April 20th at 8:30 p.m. This will also be broadcast by Zoom for those who are not licensed amateur radio operators.

Please plan to participate. If you have questions about this exercise, please reach out to me by email to greg.fabricius@gmail.com or by phone using 435-757-3330.

Emergency Communications Plan

During an emergency, normal means of communication may become inoperative. The following suggestions can help individuals and familes in their planning for potential outages. For the Emergency Communications Specialists joining us, consider how you could share this information with the members of your wards.

1. Print a Hard Copy of Contacts

This is especially helpful for younger family members who do not have important phone numbers memorized, but all family members should carry a contact list in the event you lose your phone and it's contact list. A small card would be most convenient to carry in a school bag, backpack, wallet or purse, providing quick access to emergency contact information - but the size of the list can be adjusted based on individual need and desired detail.

2. Program an I.C.E. Number in Phones

If family members are injured or incapacitated, it is helpful to have an In Case of Emergency (ICE) number in everyone’s phone. Emergency responders know to look for this number.

Remember, ICE numbers must be accessible even when the screen is locked. To do this:

• On an iPhone, you can use the built-in Health app
• On Android, you can download the ICE app
• On Samsung Galaxy phones, you can add an emergency contact under the built-in Contacts app

3. Modes of Communication

Cell Phones

You might first reach for your cell phone to get in touch with loved ones. However, FEMA and other disaster agencies recommend against using cell phones.

 

An example: When two IEDs detonated at the Boston Marathon’s finish line in 2013, mobile phone carriers were overloaded. In the fog of disaster, hundreds of thousands of people worldwide tried calling their loved ones in the Boston area. The Boston metropolitan area’s robust mobile networks simply clogged up as Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and other providers coped with a massive and unexpected surge.

If you cannot contact family by low bandwidth modes, or must call emergency services, keep the call short so you don’t tie up the lines.

Text Messaging

SMS text messaging doesn’t use as much network bandwidth as calling, so texts are more likely to go through even when the network is congested. Texting also won’t tie up the network like calling, which is why FEMA recommends texts for communication.

Tips:

• Create a group on your phone. Then you can send a message to everyone in your emergency contacts at once. There are apps like GroupMe which make group texting easier.
• Pack a portable solar power bank in your survival bag to keep using your cell for emergency communications even with the power out.

Landlines

Landlines use copper wires buried underground, making them less likely to be damaged during natural disasters than cell phone towers. They also don’t require electricity to work. If your contacts retained their landline phones make sure you have those numbers in your emergency contacts list.

Tips:

 

• Choose a corded landline phone. Cordless phones require electricity and won’t work during power outages.
• If you have call forwarding on your landline, forward calls to your cell number during an emergency. This way, you will still get incoming calls, such as during an evacuation.

Social Media Messaging

Social media and email are great ways to send bulk messages to friends and family during disasters. Just send one message or status report to everyone to let them know you are okay instead of wasting precious network space to call each individually.

Tip:

 

• Make sure you know your social media passwords if you need to access your profile from someone else’s computer or phone. 

Two-Way Radio

As radio operators, we understand how this mode of communication is beneficial in an emergency. If family members are not interested in obtaining an amateur license, consider the GMRS option. This is a licensed radio service but it does not require an exam to obtain the license. With the numerous GMRS repeaters around northern Utah it is a valuable option to consider for those who do not want to attempt the amateur exam.

 

Written Messages

You can use written messages to share vital information as a last resort. For example, if you must evacuate your primary meeting point, you might write a message on the wall.

This is an easy way to communicate where you have gone. However, there are some obvious downsides to this. You won’t know whether your family will see the message, and the message could get destroyed by fire or flood.

4. Choose a Central Contact

A central contact is someone located out of state. The central contact must be out of state because during local disasters, local networks may be overloaded, but long-distance calls will still usually go through.

If you cannot get in touch with family members through any of the methods listed in #3, then you will call the central contact instead. The Central Contact will give each family member news and updates each time they call.

Another good idea is to stagger your calls at established intervals to give updates. For example, Dad calls the central contact every hour, Mom calls at 10 minutes after the hour, etc.

Keep calling until the family is reunited.

5. Set Meeting Points

The next part of your family communication plan is meeting points. These are the places where you will go if in danger or to reunite. Depending on the type of emergency, you will need multiple meeting points.

• Primary meeting point: This will probably be your home.
• Neighborhood meeting point: This is where you will go if your home is unsafe, but the neighborhood is not affected.
• City/town meeting point: If you aren’t at home when the disaster hits and can’t get home, this is where you will go. It should be a safe location, preferably with a storm shelter and nearby places you attend frequently. For example, you might choose a hospital halfway between you and your spouse’s workplace. Or you might choose your children’s school as the meeting point.
• Out-of-town meeting point: This is where you will go if the entire region has become unsafe and you need to evacuate without your family. It might be a relative’s home in the next city or state.

 Other tips:

• If you have children: Make sure you know the emergency procedures at your children's schools/daycares, so you will know where they will be located and how to get in contact.
• Preserve phone battery life: Turn off all unneeded apps, turn off mobile data, and reduce screen brightness to save your battery.
• Sign up for disaster alerts: Learn more about emergency alert options at ready.gov/alerts. Also, check if your children’s school district has an alert system.
• After a disaster: Mark yourself as “Safe” on Facebook and register yourself as “Safe and Well” on the American Red Cross website.
• Practice! Plan communication drills to ensure everyone understands what to do. Go over the plan yearly and update contact information as needed.