so we ran a simulated disaster exercise last Saturday with our local ARES group and honestly I wasnt prepared for how much I learned. the scenario was a major flood event, county EOC gets stood up, hospitals and shelters need net check-ins, the whole deal. on paper it sounds straightforward right? but when you're actually trying to coordinate traffic between three different agencies who all want things done differently it gets real messy real fast.

the biggest thing that bit us was logging. we had like four people trying to handle message traffic and nobody had agreed ahead of time on whether we were using ICS-213 forms or just free text logs. total chaos for the first 20 minutes. the net control guy (who is very experienced, been doing this for 30+ years) said this was actually the most realistic part because real disasters always start that way.

we also had a scenario inject where the repeater went down and we had to shift to simplex. that was where things really fell apart because half the team didnt know the backup simplex frequency we'd filed in the EOP. lesson learned there for sure.

anyway curious if anyone else does these drills regularly and what the biggest surprises were for your group. do you do tabletop stuff or full-on simulated exercises with actual radio traffic?

yeah the logging thing gets everyone. we had almost the exact same problem at a SET a few years back. the thing is everyone practices their radio skills but nobody practices the paperwork and message handling side of it, and that's what actually breaks down when it counts. ICS forms exist for a reason but if half your team has never actually filled one out under any kind of pressure they freeze up.

we started doing mini tabletop exercises at our monthly meetings, nothing fancy just a scenario on paper and we talk through who does what. it sounds boring compared to actually getting on the air but it catches so many coordination gaps before they become real problems. the simplex frequency thing is huge too — we actually laminated cards with our backup frequencies and put them in every go bag. low tech solution but it works.

the repeater-goes-down inject is classic and every group should experience it at least once. nothing humbles a team faster than losing their infrastructure and realizing half the members can barely hit each other on simplex from across town.

I just joined ARES a few months ago and havent been to a real exercise yet, only the orientation stuff. this is kind of intimidating to read honestly haha but also good to know what to expect. is there a good resource for learning the ICS-213 forms before my first actual drill? I looked on the ARRL site a bit but got kind of lost.