Santa Clara County ARES/RACES Quarterly Drill



Santa Clara County ARES/RACES Quarterly Drill

Storm / Flood / Packet

January 23 2010

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1. Overview

|Description |SCCO ARES/RACES Quarterly Drill - Storm / Flood / Packet Reporting |

|Event Date |January 23, 2010 |

|County RACES Activation |None for this drill |

|City RACES |Cities should obtain RACES activation before sending people into the field |

|Plan Date |1/06/2010 |

|Plan Revision |1.0 |

1 Scenario

The drill will focus on gathering situational data during a severe storm and reporting via packet to the County on a newly upgraded County packet BBS system (now in Phase 1 Deployment). Area-wide information will be reported back to cities, also by packet, including projections of flash flooding. Particular emphasis is on reporting from areas known to be prone to flooding and on creek and reservoir conditions.

It has been raining for 4 days. There have been high winds which have toppled power and telephone poles. Many areas are without power and/or telephone service. The weather service is forecasting a storm surge and associated water cresting and flooding. Water is rising in most streams and rivers. Reservoirs are likely to spill. Persons may need to be evacuated from low-lying areas. Cities are in need of better information about where localized flooding is occurring within their borders and better regional information concerning transportation, storm surge predictions, and water supply status. The County is badly in need of situational data from cities.

The drill will be initiated by a call to cities with an ominous weather forecast and a request for cities to deploy their amateur radio operators to strategic points and gather storm information to be sent back to the County.

County Communications: The County is in need of information about areas affected and any required logistical support. Cities will ask their amateur radio field operators to pass traffic using voice and/or packet operations to their city EOCs. City EOCs will coalesce these reports and provide the information to County using the County packet BBS system, contacting the particular BBS assigned to the given city as listed in the resource guide below. Cities are expected to verify ahead of time their ability to interoperate with this recently upgraded system. See the Timeline below for activities in the week before the drill.

City Communications: Individual city EOCs need information from the field about stream conditions and areas affected; EOCs will exchange information with the County, primarily by packet.

City hams will report their information by voice or packet to their city EOCs. Deploying field packet stations, especially to locations such as volunteer centers, would be ideal, but is subject to resource availability and capability within the city.

Situation reports, messages and logistic requests should be sent from the city EOCs to the County using packet operations when possible. If packet is not an option, the Message Net should be used. Note that a primary purpose of this drill is to test packet capabilities under the newly upgraded packet system.

2 Event Objectives

1. Re-familiarize hams with locations in their city that are likely to be of interest in a storm

2. Storm and flooding assessment

3. Packet operation with new Outpost setting

4. Test new packet BBS with some serious load

5. Test the ability of participants to access new BBS

6. Message handling, including PacFORMS "city scan" and "logistics request"

7. Some opportunities for evaluation under the new County training program

2. Resources

1 Radio Communications

SCCo will be operating on the following frequencies:

|Channel Name |Resource Name |R/S |Freq |Off |PL |Comments |

|Message Net |W6TI |R |147.360 |+ |110.9 |Used to pass formal |

| | | | | | |traffic to/from city EOCs |

| | | | | | |and County EOC |

|Command Net |WB6ZVW |R |442.500 |+ |100.0 |Used for tactical and |

| | | | | | |command traffic to/from |

| | | | | | |city EOCs and County EOC |

|Resource Net |AA6BT |R |146.115 |+ |100.0 |Monitored as a backup to |

| | | | | | |other nets |

|Resource Net |N6NAC |R |444.625 |+ |110.9 |Monitored |

|Cities with mailboxes on K6MTV-1 (PAL, LA, LAH, MTV, NASA Ames, Stanford) |

|Packet 2m |K6MTV-1 |S | | | |Outpost |

| | | |144.310 | | | |

|Packet 220 |K6MTV-1 |S | | | |Outpost |

| | | |223.540 | | | |

| | | | | | | |

|All other cities have mailboxes on W6XSC-1 - the original county node |

|Packet 2m |W6XSC-1 |S |144.910 | | |Outpost |

|Packet 220 |W6XSC-1 |S |223.660 | | |Outpost |

| | | | | | | |

If any of the above-listed repeaters are not functioning properly, operators should first attempt to use another repeater monitored by the County, and if that fails, to shift to using simplex on the output frequency of the intended repeater.

Cities should try to pass most of their formal traffic using packet operation on their assigned BBS. Avoid the 443.41 frequency if possible as that channel doubles as the backbone frequency that JNOS BBS systems use to communicate amongst themselves. If packet is not possible, the traffic should be passed on the message net. If the message net is unavailable, then the Command net should be used.

2 Resource Plan - County Operations

County will need a minimum of 8 personnel. These personnel will be assigned as follows:

1. Shift Supervisor

2. Message Net Control

3. Command Net Control

4. Packet station operator

5. Packet station scribe

6. EOC simulator

7. Evaluator - packet operations

8. Evaluator - voice nets

If additional personnel are available, the following positions will be staffed. If additional personnel are not available, these positions will be covered as additional duties by the existing staff.

1. Message Net Scribe

2. Runner

3. T-card manager

Resource Plan - City Operations

Each city will determine its own staffing and resources needed. The following are possible resource assignments

EOC operations:

Shift supervisor

City Resource Net control

Message Net control

Packet station operator

Scribes

Field operations:

Stream / reservoir level observers

Windshield-survey teams to observe flooding and storm damage

Shadows for officials

4 Personal Equipment

Persons responding to county should have their 2-hour Carry Kit with them. See: > Go Kit

Persons responding for the cities should follow their city's guidelines for equipment. Field responders may wish to review the go-kit suggestions on the scc-ares- website.

3. Command and Control Authorization

The County will not be activating RACES/ACS for this drill, since there are no field responders for the County.

If the cities plan to have field responders, they should activate RACES/ACS with their city.

4. Timeline

|Jan 18 |Approx |New county packet system up |

| |12:00 | |

|Jan 18 |Approx |Notice sent to EC and MAC list: Network up; please reconfigure Outpost |

| |12:01 | |

|Jan 18 |After |Cities reconfigure Outpost and begin testing new Outpost configurations with updated County BBS system|

| |Notice | |

|Jan 18-22 | |Help desk available via Yahoo Group "scc-packet" - all cities request help for any packet problems |

| | |they are unable to solve - all cities verify they are connecting to the correct BBS (K6MTV-1 or |

| | |W6XSC-1) |

|Jan 23 |12:00 |Anyone who is scheduled to be evaluated at the County for N1 or P1 shows up for preparation and basic |

| | |knowledge check |

|Jan 23 |13:00 |Drill participants congregate - County participants should show up at the County EOC. |

|Jan 23 |14:00 |After days of rain, County EOC activates in the face of a severe storm surge warning. Cities asked to|

| | |check in |

|Jan 23 |14:08 - 14:09 |As predicted, 4 inches of water fall, and start draining into creeks and reservoirs |

|Jan 23 |14:10 |County disseminates creek surge predictions and requests City Scan reports |

|Jan 23 |14:00 - 16:00 |Cites supply status information and logistics requests to County. County supplies regional |

| | |information to Cities. |

|Jan 23 |16:01 - 17:00 |Drill post-mortem at County |

|Jan 23 - 26| |Cities send after-action reports to County- see Contact information at end of this document |

|Jan 26 |20:30 |After-SVECS net on 146.115, +, PL 100.0, participants share their feedback and have an open discussion|

5. County Operations

The County simulator will inject a major storm warning at 14:08. The simulator will then continue to inject canned weather, transportation, and water supply events periodically during the drill.

Packet and radio operators will accumulate situational information from cities and aggregate it to the County EOC personnel (i.e. the simulator).

Those net control operators or packet operators asking for evaluation under the County Training Program will be evaluated during the 2 hour drill.

Participants will be careful to make clear at all times that messages sent over the public airwaves are drill traffic. This definitely includes packet messages.

Please note that the resource net in a real emergency would be initially used for resources to check in before their city nets were established. This part of normal operations will be skipped in this drill in the interests of efficiency. However the resource nets on AA6BT and N6NAC will be monitored during this event to allow anyone with questions on configuring the new packet system to contact someone at County. Hopefully no one will have left this until Saturday the 23rd, and will instead have reconfigured and tested their packet system early in the week.

Those wishing to be evaluated under the County MAC Program should make arrangements in advance of this drill.

6. City Operations

Cities will deploy amateur radio operators early in the drill according to where history shows prior trouble spots, or to good vantage points. The number one goal, whether in a drill or a live situation is always safety.

In order to make the best use of the short (two hour) drill time, it will be best to have a preconceived set of messages to be sent by deployed teams to the city EOC, and by the EOC to the County.

Prior to the day of the drill, each EC should re-familiarize himself and his crew with historical trouble spots in his town. He should also make sure he knows where important information may be obtained in a real emergency. The packet system should be tested on the new County BBS system, and the fairly simple but quite important changes to the Outpost configuration should be made.

Cities may deploy participants to actual sites or perform this function virtually (which might teach fewer lessons). Cities deploying to actual sites may want to have prepared some re-deployment instructions for some individuals or teams.

Consider having the teams that do stream reports move to different locations. 

Cities should be careful to stress at all times that the messages put out on the public airwaves are drill traffic. This definitely includes packet messages.

Packet Operation

The following procedures should be used on the packet net:

1. Outpost should be set to NOT poll.

2. All messages should have a city-assigned message ID and description of the type of message in the subject. Please note that the subject line is supposed to be carefully constructed to reflect what is in a packet message. Just to make sure everyone is familiar with the format and process for constructing packet message subject lines (which has rather problematic in some previous drills), Michael Fox has prepared an appendix (Appendix A) which is included in this document with that information.

3. County will announce on the message net the message IDs for the messages they have received.

County will announce on the message net when there are messages waiting for the cities.

7. Typical County Traffic

Some typical classes of messages the county may send to cities:

1. surge predictions from weather service office or water company offices

2. water quality alerts from various water companies

3. transportation disruptions

4. responses to logistics requests

5. other

Messages will be paced to optimize drill experience and also training program evaluation experience.

8. Typical City Traffic

Here are some typical Messages from field responders to their EOC - these should be prefaced with a location, such as intersection of (street1) & (street2), Thomas Guide (x)

Windshield surveys (field messages - should be summarized to County)

1. Intersection is flooded. car stalled. person in car, no immediate danger.

2. Flooding and debris have blocked storm drain.

3. Power pole down across the intersection. Wires arcing. Traffic stopped.

4. Tree fell on car near intersection. No one appears hurt; traffic blocked.

5. Metal debris on VTA lightrail high voltage wires. Arcing. Train stopped. CalTrain may be affected.

6. (bridge z) people observing from bridge - possibly at risk.

7. (street w) Traffic moving through deep water - cars stalling.

8. (creek z) There are some kids on the bank of the creek who are yelling with glee. One of them is very close to the water.

9. The flood waters are getting deep enough that some cars have stalled and it looks like some people are evacuating their homes.

10. A nursing home about a half block away is starting to flood. They are looking for a place to take their people.

Stream Reports (field reports - should be aggregated and sent to County)

1. (x creek) is high and fast, spilling over banks.

2. (x creek) debris carried along.

3. (x creek at bridge y) debris is starting to block the water at bridge.

4. (reservoir r) reservoir is within 2 feet of overflow

Public Assistance (should not go to County unless City needs help with)

1. Stranded people are asking for help. Is there a shelter open? What do I tell them?

2. Need exit route from this area

3. Medical emergency at (x and y)

9. City Planning Suggestions

1. Pre-incident planning: find areas of traditional flooding and other traditional storm impact areas

2. Make a deployment plan for monitoring these areas and reporting to County - note: if a city sends people out to the field, or otherwise dispatches amateur radio operators on assignment, it should make sure it has arranged in advance for a City RACES activation and activation number

3. Make a resource plan - for people and equipment

4. Get official city RACES activation number

5. Review procedures for tracking and protecting individuals

6. Review procedures for emergencies

7. Prepare canned messages or further instructions for deployed teams in sealed envelopes

To expand on point 1. above, while County is setting the general scenario for the drill, and is providing guidelines that the cities can use, each city is free to customize the drill to suit their particular situation.

It would be beneficial for overall preparedness for each city to evaluate and identify the areas that they believe will be relevant in a storm/flood scenario. Some of these locations might be:

Areas that are likely to flood

Areas with at-risk trees (e.g. Eucalyptus)

Stream level observation points

Sand-bagging locations

Shelters

Water district locations

Volunteer Center

Locations of nursing homes, assisted care facilities and outpatient clinics

Locations of medical points of distribution (PODs)

Locations where Vulnerable or Special Needs Populations are housed

Locations of large animals?

10. Safety

All participants must operate within their training and comfort levels. For example, a single operator talking and driving while doing windshield surveys is discouraged. Participants should not be deployed to areas that might later put them in harm's way with no exit plan. Anyone being dispatched by a city should be done so under an official City RACES Activation.

11. Evaluation

Those working at the County EOC and wishing to be evaluated should alert the County MAC Program Administrator.

12. Contact Info

Event Organizers

and Contacts

Al Whaley, SCCo ADEC, 650-947-6542 or awscco-at-sunnyside-com

Larry Carr, SCCo DEC, 650-269-9638 or lwcarr10-at-pacbell-net

County MAC Program Administrator

Michael Fox, SCCo ADEC, 650-279-2553 or N6MEF-at-mefox-org

13. Additional Information

Here are a couple of websites that might be helpful:







It is also advisable to check with your Emergency Manager and / or Corporation Yard Manager and / or Public Works Supervisor for any maps or other information they can provide and to see if they have suggestions of responses they would like tested during the drill.

Appendix A: Standard Format for Packet Message Subject

Packet messages in the Santa Clara County ARES®/RACES network should use the following standard format for the subject line:

[Originator][Message Number]-[Severity]/[Handling Order]-[Subject or type of message]

Where:

|Originator: |3-letter abbreviation for the originator’s tactical call |

|Message Number: |3-digit message number |

|Severity: |1-letter indicator as follows: |

| |E = Emergency |

| |U = Urgent |

| |O = Other |

|Handling Order: |1-letter indicator as follows: |

| |I = Immediate |

| |P = Priority |

| |R = Routine |

|Type of Message: |Short description of the subject or type of message, such as: |

| |Abbreviated subject of an ICS-213 message |

| |Brief subject of tactical text message |

| |“CityScan” |

| |“LogisticsReq” |

| |“SitRep” |

| |“MissionReq” |

| |or other descriptor as applicable |

Example:

Consider the following example subject line:

XSC120-U/P-PACRIMS SITREP 1

We can easily see the following information:

Originator: XSC = Santa Clara County

Message #: 120

Severity: U = Urgent

Handling Order: P = Priority

Type of Message: This is PACRIMS Situation Report 1

2 Configuring Outpost

Outpost will automatically insert the three-letter originator abbreviation for you. You need to verify two settings:

First, Go to: Tools > Report Settings

Set the “Tactical ID” field to your official 3-character tactical call. In this example, it is set to “CUP” for Cupertino.

You should also set the “Next Message Number” to whatever your next message number will be. In this example, it is set to 100.

Next, go to: Tools > Message Settings

Check “Add Message Number to Subject Line” and select “without hyphenation”.

That’s it. You’re done! Outpost will automatically insert your three-character tactical and message number into the Subject line of new messages. Edit to suite.

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