so our ARES group finally did one of those full-on simulated disaster exercises saturday and i have a lot of feelings about it. the scenario was a major flood event cutting off the northern part of the county, and we were supposed to coordinate with the EOC and two simulated shelter locations using only simplex and our backup repeater since the main one was considered 'down' for the drill.

first hour was honestly kind of a mess. a few guys showed up without their go-kits fully charged, one of the HTs had a dead battery which like... come on, we all knew this was happening for weeks. net control had trouble keeping traffic flowing because people were jumping on top of each other and nobody remembered the tactical call procedures we practiced like three months ago. it's one of those things where you think everyone knows the drill until they actually have to do it under even mild pressure.

the second half went a lot better once we slowed down and net control started being more deliberate about calling stations in order. the message passing to the shelter locations worked pretty well once we got into a rhythm, and the interface with the EOC liaison went smoother than i expected honestly.

big lesson for me personally was that logging is way harder in a real scenario than just checking into a net. we were passing ICS-213 traffic and trying to keep a log simultaneously and i just fell behind. anybody else done these kinds of drills and have tips for staying on top of paperwork while also handling radio? i know some groups have dedicated logging people but we dont always have the bodies for that.

yeah the logging thing is a real struggle, we ran into the exact same problem during our SET last year. what ended up helping us was having whoever is handling radio NOT also be responsible for the formal log — even if it's just one extra person with a clipboard writing down times and message numbers. if you really can't spare the body, some guys use a voice recorder running in the background so they can reconstruct the log afterward, not perfect but better than gaps.

the battery thing drives me absolutely nuts. we actually made it a rule that every go-kit gets a quick check the night before any activation or drill, not just a 'yeah probably fine' kind of check but actually power it on and verify. took one embarrassing moment at a real weather event to get everyone on board with that. sounds like your group had a pretty realistic experience honestly, the messy first hour is kind of normal and if you came out of it with a list of things to fix that's a win in my book.

this is really interesting to read, im still pretty new to ARES and haven't been in a full exercise yet. our group does tabletop stuff but nothing like what you're describing with actual radio traffic. do you find that the simulated pressure actually translates or do people kind of mentally check out because they know its not real? i always wonder if ill freeze up when it counts and i cant tell if drills actually help with that or not