K7CEM-New

Riverside Fire Authority Volunteer Station #5 had visitors this weekend.  Team member Jim Pace brought a great group of new hams, recently licensed through his Volunteer Examiner program, for a tour on Saturday afternoon.  We had the opportunity to show them the K7CEM repeater as well as the 100 ft. antenna tower outside the facility.  Jim took the time to explain how the repeater system works and answered questions.  A repeater can be a strange looking piece of equipment to new hams.

Most of the time, however, was spent in Comm II and around Comm IV, our communications trailer.  After demonstrating the on-board equipment and radios, we spent a considerable amount of time discussing the mission of the Centralia Amateur Radio Emergency Service team, and how we train.  As the area was under a flood watch this weekend, questions naturally turned to the Chehalis River, Skookumchuck River, and China Creek, our normal sources when flooding occurs.

Our next scheduled training period for Centralia ARES will occur only two days after the Station #5 tour and we will be visiting five different flood monitoring locations in Centralia.  The new hams were invited to join us on the training and learn more about how floods occur, local planning to mitigate stream flow, river gauges and how ARES members volunteer during local flooding.

After the Station #5 tour, the new hams also visited Chuck, W5KAV, for a tour of his wonderful ham shack and antenna farm.  Later, they stopped at Don’s house, AI7CE, to see his ham station under construction.  What a great way to introduce those new to the hobby to the equipment we all use.

It is November.  Along with days and days of heavy rain, comes our first flood warning.  While this didn’t turn out to be much, it is certainly a reminder of what is to come over the next few months.  For some of the new team members, it is their first opportunity to locate and understand Centralia’s Emergency Response Divisions.  After one of our past “100 year” floods, emergency managers realized parts of Centralia could be cut off from each other if the Skookumchuck river, the Chehalis River and China Creek all rose at the same time, resulting in five separate “divisions”, possibly inaccessible for up to 48 hours.

While this might be an inconvenience, the real danger would be if emergency teams were unable to respond to a fire, power outage or a life threatening incident.  To overcome these issues, city officials decided to place a small cadre of response workers and vehicles in one or more of the divisions susceptible to being cut off by rising waters.  These might include a street department dump truck with sand, a deep water vehicle, a fire engine, a police car or even an Amateur Radio Emergency Service communications van with capability of setting out a medical helicopter landing zone for day or night operations.  Time to make sure everyone on the ARES team knows where these collection points are located in each Emergency Response Division.  To make it a little more interesting, we conducted the situation briefing on simplex while all team members remained in their vehicles.  At least everyone remained dry.

At the same time, it was a great opportunity to put eyes on each of our eleven designated helicopter landing zones.  Finally, we threw a couple of “issues” into the mix by pretending two of the primary roads leading into the north end and the hospital area were closed due to flooding requiring team members find another way around to their destinations.  Rain made the exercise even more realistic.

Within 90 minutes, all team members had located their assignments and checked on all helicopter landing zone locations.  We debriefed and everyone was headed home.  Another catastrophe averted – at least until the next flood incident.

Annually thousands of Washington residents take part in the Great American Shakeout, a well rehearsed training scenario dedicated to teaching everyone how to safely respond to earthquakes.  With training dates flexible for this event, Centralia Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES) team members selected Monday, October 18th – their normal training day – for this year’s earthquake exercise.  The scenario, based around the 6.8 magnitude 2001 Nisqually quake, brought the team together to practice working with our relatively new Community Situation Status Tracking forms.

We began with a call up requesting ARES members, once their home situations had been deemed safe, to respond to an unknown staging area.  In this exercise, both Centralia repeaters were offline due to the quake.  Team members were advised to respond to the core areas of Centralia and, using only simplex frequencies, contact one of our mobile communication vans where they would be directed to a staging area near Centralia College for assignment.  At the staging area, each team member was to show they had their vest, ARES ID, map books, radios, go-bags and mobile door shields.  Next they were given a multi-block location within the city limits to find using map page and grid square in their map books.  Once we were sure everyone knew where to go, each team member deployed.  Some areas were business districts while others were residential streets.  The Community Situation Status Tracking forms are designed to give the Incident Commander in our EOC a quick “snapshot” of the condition of his/her community after the earthquake.  The form documents injuries, both minor and major, light and major structural damage, fires as well as gas leaks, broken water mains, power outages, bridge / road damage and visible damage to homes and businesses.  Each survey takes only a couple of minutes once the team member arrives at their assigned location.  That information is relayed back to the net control in the communications van where it would checked for accuracy and then sent to the amateur radio operator assigned to the Centralia EOC.

After any large disaster such as an earthquake, communities ramp up their emergency operations response but with power often out and many possible catastrophes present, the EOC must begin to prioritize its response.  In order to prioritize that response, the Incident Commander must have some idea just how bad the situation is.  Situation tracking forms completed by trained mobile volunteers such as an ARES team can  produce this “community snapshot” in a relatively short time.  There is no easier way to collect this information than using trained, trusted volunteers with a plan and direct communications to the Incident Commander in the EOC.

Monday turned out to be a dark, cold and rainy training night.  The forms, new to us, will need to be changed and expanded somewhat but these kinds of changes are what we want from our field training process.  For now, everyone worked through the training exercise safely and our communications systems operated exactly as planed.  Thanks to our great volunteers who always work hard to keep our community safe.