So last weekend was my first real activation with our county ARES group and i figured id share how it went because when i was searching around before joining i couldnt find many posts from people just talking about what its actually like on the ground.

Background: ive been licensed about 14 months, got my General last spring, and joined ARES maybe 4 months ago after going to a few nets and meeting some folks. Did the ICS-100 and 200 online courses which they basically require now, and went to two training exercises before this.

So there was a bad storm system that came through and the county EOC activated us to support the shelter that opened at the middle school. I was paired with a more experienced op — guy named Dave who has been doing this for like 20 years — and we basically handled message traffic between the shelter and the EOC for about 6 hours. Nothing too crazy, mostly welfare traffic and some logistics stuff, but it felt real in a way the exercises just dont.

What surprised me was how much of it was just... waiting. And then suddenly things would get busy for 20 minutes and youd have to be really on your game with your logging and passing things accurately. Dave kept reminding me to slow down and read back everything which i was glad for.

Anyone else remember their first activation? Im curious how different it is county to county because ive heard some groups are really well organized and others are kind of a mess.

yeah that waiting-then-chaos pattern is pretty much universal in my experience, doesnt matter if its a shelter op or a marathon or whatever. the exercises are good for the radio skills but they cant really simulate that mental shift you have to make when stuff suddenly gets real and someone actually needs the information you're handling.

my first activation was a flood thing back in 2019 and i made so many dumb little errors just from nerves, transposing digits in a message number, forgetting to log the time, stuff like that. having a mentor alongside you like your Dave guy is genuinely invaluable. some counties just throw new people in solo and that's rough.

sounds like your group has it together which is great. the ICS training requirement is something our group started pushing harder in the last couple years and it really does make a difference when you're working alongside served agencies who use that structure all day every day.

That's pretty much exactly how my first one went too, though mine was supporting a triathlon which is obviously way lower stakes but still good practice. The read-back thing Dave mentioned is huge and honestly something I still have to consciously remind myself to do on a busy net.

One thing that helped me a lot was getting into the habit of writing everything down even when it seems redundant. You think you'll remember that a message came in at 14:32 but then three things happen at once and suddenly you have no idea what order anything happened in. Our EC actually does a pretty good AAR after every activation which I wish more groups did — that's where I learned half of what I actually know about operating in an EOC environment.