Amateur Radio Emergency Service
Exercise Report - Napanee Exercise 7 November 2011
Background
Rebecca Murphy, CEMC for Greater Napanee attended the Loyalist
District ARES semi-annual conference on 10 April 2010 and asked for
emergency communications support. Since there is no ARES group in
Lennox and Addington County that support would have to come from the
other groups in Loyalist District: Kingston, Frontenac, Hastings and
Prince Edward. The district decided to have its first District
exercise in Napanee in November 2010.
The exercise provided an opportunity to work with ideas we had been
developing on the roles of a group adjacent to a stricken group as
well as the concepts embodied in the EMO course, IMS100. In
particular we used an ARES staging area with managers, monitor and
relay operators outside the stricken area, and operators at the Red
Cross office in Belleville.
The exercise was organized by the DEC, EC's and delegates, who also
acted as observers and played the parts of local officials. The
operators who volunteered were told the date and time but were given
little information beforehand.
ARES was strongly supported by Rebecca Murphy as well as by Nancy
Manion, EMC at Lennox and Addington County General Hospital.
Scenario
Train derailment with leaking unknown gas just north of Thomas Street,
close to bridge over Bridge and Dundas sts, E Centre of Napanee. Area
within 500 metres to be evacuated: West to John St not including Town
Hall, N to Queen St. Phone exchange for Napanee including EOC out of
action. Hydro intact. Control Group assembling at EOC. Evacuees
directed to designated shelter, the Arena. Unknown numbers of
casualties enroute to hospital. EOC is equipped with its own radio to
Fire, Ambulance, Roads and Water. OPP attending at EOC.
Mayor at EOC needs to tell EMO community emergency declared.
Social Services at EOC needs to contact Red Cross requesting inquiry
phone in Belleville.
Hospital needs mobile HAZMAT team, request to EMO ops in Toronto
Media centre established at Town Hall, to be informed of inquiry line.
Participating
Mobile operators:
John Pederson VE3ZJP Kingston
Drew Wollin VE3UIN Kingston
Mike Beausoleil VE3TD Kingston
Peter Kooiman VE3NXE Kingston
Matt Dwight VE3OCC PE County
Gilbert Provost VA3NQ PE County
Bob Culp VA3ACE PE County
Dave Ackerman VE3UGT PE County
Brian Williams VA3BRW Hastings
Staging Managers
Kevin Maylin VA3THB PE County
Larry McGuire VE3LDM Kingston
Red Cross Belleville
Tim Pekkonen VE3UO Hastings
Bob Moore VE3QWB Hastings
Monitor and Relay
Glen Killam VE3GNA
Robert Boyd VE3SV Kingston
EMO Ops centre
Jim Taylor VA3KU EMO Ops
Directing Staff
Bill Milligan VA3WOW DEC Loyalist
Peter Hodgson VE3UR EC Hastings
Rod Ellis VE3RXE EC Kingston
Doug Monk VE3ZDG EC PE County
Art Sinclair VE3SQG AEC PE County
Town of Greater Napanee
Rebecca Murphy
Execution
The staging managers were briefed generally on their task and looked
over the staging area beforehand. It was the Canadian Tire parking
lot on Hwy 41 just south of 401, where permission had been obtained
from the store manager. Red Cross, Monitor and Relay and EMO Ops
were briefed beforehand by email. The mobile operators were given a
warning order one week in advance, telling them to expect a phone call
at 0800 on 7 November. On that morning the EC's phoned the operators
and gave them the location of the staging area.
The operators were checked in at the staging area and dispatched to
four stations: the evacuation centre, the hospital, the town hall
media centre and the EOC. Net control was assigned to the town hall
operators. The town hall has a pre-established antenna and the
hospital has a pre-established antenna and its own 2-metre radio. On
arrival at the ARES staging area the managers gave the mobile
operators a briefing note and dispatched them as requested by the EOC,
chief of logistics.
16 messages, including several tactical messages, were pre-scripted
by Rebecca Murphy and Doug Monk, requiring relays by HF, the VE3TJU
repeater and one message to be delivered in person to a residence by a
mobile operator. These were given to the operators by directing staff
at their locations, playing the part of local officials. Two-part
message forms were used for incoming and outgoing messages with one
copy presented to the clients.
By shortly after 1100 the traffic was cleared and the staging managers
were requested to withdraw the operators as normal communications had
resumed. The operators checked in again at the staging area and were
sent to the EOC for a debriefing session, with the directing staff,
Rebecca Murphy and Lisa Harvey, Loyalist District EMO field officer.
The town of Greater Napanee provided pizza and pop.
Monitor and Relay and Red Cross submitted comments by email later and
the exercise was discussed further at the Loyalist District conference
on 27 November 2011.
Lessons learned
A. Staging
"Staging Area
A temporary location where 'available' personnel and equipment wait to
be assigned. It avoids 'freelancing.' A staging Area may include
feeding, fuelling and sanitation services.
More than one Staging Area can be set up to meet specific functions,
such as for EMS, fire, public works, etc. Each Staging Area should
have a Manager. "
IMS 100 Dec 2008
A major objective of this exercise was to work this role. This is a
new task in ARES. We designated the two staging managers in advance
and discussed the requirements with them. We allocated them the
talk-in frequency. They carried out the briefing of operators. They
dispatched operators to locations as requested by the Municipal
Incident Command, (Logistics, Communications Coordinator.) They
withdrew operators and brought them back to the staging area. We
should debrief the Staging Managers in more detail to establish and
improve a protocol.
The spread sheet format with columns for arrival, dispatch, return and
out of service seemed to work. Other forms such as an intake form and
job ticket can be worked up using Mike Hickey's prototype and forms
from the Frontenac group .
We need to create a pool of trained and experienced staging managers,
know who they are and provide them with the forms, signs etc. that
they need.
The Communications Coordinator at the EOC (me) should have asked for
status reports from Staging. This would have avoided the situation in
this exercise where operators were not deployed. My apologies to
these operators. We should probably make periodic status reports from
Staging addressed to the EOC part of the routine. In reality staging
and the municipal communications coordinator would try to keep a
reserve to cope with new developments.
The DEC/EC in charge would, in reality, be working closely with
staging to ensure enough, but not too many, operators are on the way,
and try to minimize waiting in the staging area. This should be
expanded in our next exercise of this type.
For the most part the operators seem to have worked well with Staging.
I would like to stress the importance of Staging knowing where the
operators are, and particularly whether the operators are still in
the stricken area. The staging manager can obtain some information by
monitoring the working frequencies, although I personally think the
operators should keep in touch with staging on the talk-in frequency
and report arrivals at assignments on this frequency.
We should emphasize the difference between returning to
Staging and being released from duty. Not only might there be more
assignments after a break, but also Staging must make sure that the
operators haven't come to grief in the stricken area and, if they are
missing, initiate a search.
At the district meeting in November we decided to initiate study
sessions to do the IMS100 course in groups for discussion.
B. Net control
I had assigned a good experienced operator with no ARES net control
experience as backup to an experienced ARES net controller, but the
experienced net controller was delayed and did not arrive at Staging
until 45 minutes after the scheduled start to the exercise. As
Gilbert, the inexperienced controller now catapulted into the Net
Control job, cheerfully put it afterwards, it was a very steep
learning curve. Neither assigned net controller was informed of their
role before they arrived at staging, let alone briefed before the
exercise.
To add to his problems we structured the timing of the exercise so
that operators would be passing traffic among each other before net
control was set up, to create a situation where net control had to get
control of an existing situation... no one is going to delay a
disaster while we get organized to our satisfaction.
To add to the chaos, net control was also assigned station duties.
This is something we should avoid doing in the future.
It was not realistic for me to designate net controllers in advance at
all, because in a real situation Staging would have to do this from
the operators the EC's send him. How Staging would know what
experience an operator has had as net control is an open question.
Perhaps an intake form at staging would ask the operators to identify
themselves as net control experienced.
The huge lesson I learned from this is that we need more of us trained
in the art of ARES net control, with its challenges of keeping track
of operator locations, management of tactical call signs, and multiple
frequencies. The Kingston group has good skills in this area and I
hope we can work with Kingston ARES on some kind of training format to
deliver to operators in the district. Kingston has also volunteered
their Training Officer Larry McGuire and net control package including
forms. Dave Lawrence of Frontenac has created some relevant
material. We should be able to somehow identify the trained net
controllers. If nothing else, our exercise pointed out that this is
urgent.
We should discuss the advisability of locating Net Control physically
in the staging area. There, Net Control could begin operating sooner,
and switch-outs and shift changes would be faster. Net Controllers
would have access to food and sanitation facilities in the staging
area. However the staging area, which ideally would be located
outside the stricken area, may not be the best location to receive and
transmit with all stations in the stricken area.
C. EC's and DEC's
As Lisa Harvey, the EMO Field Officer for our district pointed out,
the municipal Control Group meets frequently but not continuously
throughout a disaster. The Control Group is a group of municipal
officials who support the incident commander. They are not the
incident commanders although some of the same officials may also have
specified jobs within the Incident Command. An EC or the DEC should be
present at the Control Group meetings, in addition to his other
duties. In some cases the ARES EC is actually named in the municipal
emergency plan as a member of the control group.
D. Number of operators at a station
Where an antenna lead is available inside a building we should start
with two operators. First, one should be dispatched to provide
service from his car. When available, a second operator should be
dispatched to open the fixed station inside the building. If no
second operator is available the first operator should check with net
control and the client for messages that need to be passed. If there
is time after dealing with these, the first operator can report out
with net control and set up the inside station.
When there is no fixed station or antenna in a building a runner may
be recruited to sit with an operator in his car to deliver inbound
messages, and the second operator sits inside with the client to
accept outbound messages. If we can't get a runner we will need a
third operator at the site to do the runner's job.
We should encourage antennas and leads at each building likely to be
used, close to the client, so we can do without the third operator
used as a runner. In periods of little traffic we could run an inside
station with one operator. Saving people work is very important,
especially if the situation lasts a long time. We should also discuss
with clients the provision of runners. We should explore the
possibility of recruiting our own runners.
E. Delivering messages to addressees where there is no station
The PE ARES has developed and practiced a routine for delivering
messages to addressees where there is no station, but this was a few
years ago. Mobile operators are assigned to do this and they make
them selves known to net control with their IC call sign and "Mobile."
When another station has such a message to send, the mobile operator
takes the traffic on a message form in his car, drives to the address
given and delivers the message to the addressee, as usual getting a
signature on the yellow copy. The operator then gets the reply if
required on a message form, probably as "dictated." This might be a
simple acknowledgement. The operator gives the white copy to the
client and returns to his car and sends the message. He is ready then
for his next assignment.
In a real disaster this could be a large portion of our traffic.
Municipal emergency plans have pages of contacts who supply various
urgent needs. Hopefully the municipalities have the addresses,
including the home address of key persons, as well as the phone
numbers. The hospitals will have staff and patient family messages to
send.
We should practice this system.
F. "This is an exercise"
We had better get used to saying "This is an exercise." We should
establish protocol as to when to say it. One good suggestion was to
say it after the message, to catch outsiders who only hear part of the
message. We concluded at the District meeting that the best way to do
this is both before and after the entire message.
G. Lennox and Addington County General Hospital.
The hospital owns a two-metre radio and has an antenna installed. The
hospital has emergency electricity. However it lacks a power supply
component to convert the receptacle power to 12 volt dc for the radio.
We should consult with Nancy Manion about obtaining one of these
units.
H. A future Lennox and Addington ARES group
A phone canvass of the licensed hams in Greater Napanee resulted in
one visitor at the EOC during the exercise. There are other licensed
amateurs living in the county. More work needs to be done to recruit
ARES members there and eventually an autonomous ARES group.
Conclusions
The exercise was our first attempt at integrating ARES operations into
the IMS framework. We succeeded in operating a staging area fairly
well. There was little confusion between the roles of staging
managers and net control. We practiced good control of our personnel
into and out of the stricken area.
We are now more capable of supporting Napanee in spite of the absence
of an ARES group there, and more capable of operating outside our home
counties, together with operators from other groups.
We exercised the "monitor and relay" role, as well as developing the
capability of the Belleville Red Cross operators.
We have clear direction as to where future training effort should go,
particularly net control and staging.
We have some ideas on how to do it better next time.
Altogether the exercise was a success.
Post Script
Rebecca Murphy has installed an antenna at the Greater Napanee EOC and
is ordering a two-metre radio and power supply module. The
communications centre for the EOC is already exceptionally well
equipped with a radio which will communicate with the fire and roads
department. She has very generously printed 500 two-part message
forms for ARES use.
Doug Monk VE3ZDG
EC Prince Edward County ARES group
9 February 2011
