so we finally got our county ARES group together for a proper tabletop exercise, been trying to coordinate this for like six months with everyone's schedules. the scenario was a major flooding event, levee breach, bridges out, cell towers down — pretty realistic for our area honestly given what happened back in 2019.

what surprised me was how fast the communication plan fell apart in the simulation. we had this whole ICS structure mapped out, nets assigned, frequencies designated, and within like the first twenty minutes of the scenario people were just... going around the system. calling directly to whoever they thought had the answer instead of going through net control. i get why, it feels faster in the moment, but it creates this massive pile of uncoordinated traffic and net control loses situational awareness really quick.

the other thing that caught us off guard was how much we'd assumed about interoperability with the county EOC. turns out they had updated their communication protocols sometime last year and nobody had looped in the ARES group. so we were referencing an outdated resource list the whole time. kinda embarrassing but better to find that out in a tabletop than during an actual event.

anybody else done these kinds of exercises recently? curious what gaps you found in your own plans, especially around message handling and ICS integration. we're already planning a follow-up exercise that's more radio-on-the-air rather than just tabletop.

yeah the going-around-net-control thing is so common it might as well be a feature of every exercise I've ever been part of. people default to what feels efficient even when it isn't, and until you've actually drilled the discipline into muscle memory it just keeps happening. we had the same problem in a simulated hurricane scenario a couple years back, took us probably three exercises before people really internalized the traffic flow.

the interoperability gap you mentioned is a big one though. that's honestly one of the hardest things to maintain because agencies update their stuff and they dont always think to notify the volunteer groups. what we started doing is having one person in our group whose only job is to maintain that relationship with the EOC — like a liason who checks in with them every couple months even when nothing is happening. not glamorous but it made a real difference. also whenever they do any kind of training or drill we try to get at least one person embedded with them so we stay current on how they actually operate.

for your follow-up exercise, if you do go on-air I'd strongly recommend building in some deliberate obstacles — have someone play a role where a key station goes offline unexpectedly mid-exercise, forces people to adapt in real time rather than following the script. that's usually when you learn the most.

this is making me realize our group probably needs to actually do one of these. we talk about being ready but ive never actually sat through a real structured exercise, just kind of assumed we'd figure it out if something happened. reading this not so sure anymore lol