so i finally participated in a full scale simulated disaster exercise with our county ARES group last saturday and honestly it was a bit of an eye opener. we were running a scenario where a major flood had taken out the EOC's primary comms and we had to establish a net and relay traffic between three different served agencies. sounded straightforward on paper.

what nobody told me was how chaotic the first 30 minutes would be. people were on different frequencies than the briefing said, somebody's go-bag radio hadnt been charged (not naming names lol), and the net control station had trouble hearing one of the relay stations because of some terrain issue nobody had mapped out beforehand. we eventually got it sorted but man it took way longer than it should have.

the debrief afterward was honestly the most valuable part. we talked through what broke down and why, and a lot of it came down to not having a written ICS structure that everyone actually understood before the exercise started. like people knew their callsigns but not their actual role in the communication flow.

anybody else been through something similar? im curious if there are common lessons that keep coming out of these exercises across different groups because i feel like we probably reinvented the wheel on some of this stuff

yeah the uncharged radio thing happens at basically every exercise ive ever been part of, its almost a tradition at this point. but seriously the ICS piece you mentioned is so real. a lot of hams - even experienced ones - know how to operate but dont really understand how they fit into the bigger picture when theres an actual agency structure involved. ive seen nets completely stall because operators were taking traffic directly from agency staff instead of routing through the proper liaison, which just creates confusion on both ends.

the terrain issue is something a lot of groups dont bother to actually test until something goes wrong. doing a proper coverage survey before you need it is worth every minute. we do ours with HT's at low power just to find the dead spots and then we know where to pre-position repeaters or digipeaters if needed. sounds tedious but the one time we actually had to activate for a real weather event it paid off immediately.

the debrief being the best part - absolutely. thats where the learning actually happens. some groups skip it or rush it and then wonder why they make the same mistakes next time.

this is really interesting to read about, im just starting to look into getting involved with ARES in my area and honestly wasnt sure what to expect. sounds like even experienced people struggle with the coordination side of it, not just the radio part. do you think its worth joining if youre only a tech class right now or should i wait until i upgrade?