so we finally got our county ARES group to do a proper simulated emergency exercise last saturday and honestly it was a mixed bag but in a really useful way if that makes sense. the scenario was a major flooding event that knocked out commercial power and cell service across about half the county, and we had to establish comms between the EOC, two shelters, and the hospital.

things that surprised me: our go-kits are not nearly as ready as we thought. one guy showed up with a radio that hadnt been charged in like 6 months, another person couldnt remember how to program the simplex frequencies we'd agreed on beforehand. and we completely forgot to account for the fact that two of our members who were supposed to be shelter operators were also on the local fire department, so in an actual disaster they'd be unavailable.

the stuff that actually worked well was the net control rotation we'd practiced - whoever we had running net control stayed calm and kept traffic moving even when three people were trying to talk at once. and our ICS forms went pretty smooth once people got warmed up.

anyway curious if anyone else has done these kinds of drills and what blindsided you the most. we're trying to build a lessons-learned document and i want to compare notes with other groups if anyone's willing to share.

yeah the dual-role conflict thing bites almost every group at least once. we had the same problem when we did our first county-wide drill back in 2019 - half our people were also first responders or hospital volunteers and basically evaporated the moment we went "live" with the scenario. after that we started doing an availability survey before every exercise just to see who we actually have versus who we think we have.

the uncharged radio thing is so common it's almost a running joke at this point but it's genuinely a problem. what we ended up doing is making it a rule that every go-kit gets a quick power check at the monthly meeting, takes like five minutes and it's caught a lot of dead batteries before they become a real issue. nothing fancy just turn it on and verify it's got a charge.

on the ICS forms - honestly that's usually the hardest part for newer folks so if yours went well that's actually a solid win. a lot of groups spend years getting that sorted out.

this is really interesting to read, im hoping to get involved with our local ARES group once i get a bit more comfortable on the radio. one thing im wondering - how do you handle it when someone in the exercise breaks protocol or just kind of freelances? like do you stop and correct them in the moment or just note it and debrief after? i feel like that could get awkward depending on the person