so i finally got activated for a real event last weekend, been a member of our local ARES group for about 8 months now doing the nets and the training exercises but this was the first actual deployment. county emergency management asked us to support a pretty big search and rescue operation up in the hills east of town, missing hiker situation.

honestly i wasnt sure what i was walking into. i had my go-bag packed the way we practiced, HT plus my spare battery pack, the printed ICS forms, all that stuff. but there's a real difference between doing a tabletop exercise in the fire station community room and actually showing up at an incident command post where people are stressed and moving fast.

the served agency liaison was great though, she knew exactly what she wanted from us which was basically keeping comms open between the base camp and three trail head teams that were outside cell coverage. we ran simplex on a designated tactical frequency and it actually worked pretty smoothly once we got everyone on the same page about proper procedure. a couple of the SAR volunteers were keying up without IDing which caused some confusion early on but we worked through it.

the thing that surprised me most was how much of the job is just... waiting and listening carefully and writing stuff down. i think i expected it to be more intense radio-wise? anyway the hiker was found safe which was a huge relief. just wanted to share in case any other newer folks here are curious what a first activation is actually like, happy to answer questions if anyone has them

that sounds like a really solid first activation honestly. the waiting and writing thing catches everyone off guard at first - i remember my first one thinking i'd be on the air constantly and instead i spent half the time just monitoring and logging traffic. but that IS the job, accurate logs matter way more than most people realize when the incident is over and everyone's doing an after action review.

the ICS integration piece is something our group has been working really hard on for the past couple years. a lot of the older ARES guys came up in an era where we kind of did our own thing and handed the served agency whatever they asked for, but now the expectation is that you actually understand where you fit in the ICS structure, who your supervisor is, what your reporting chain looks like. sounds like your EC has been doing a good job getting the group ready for that.

glad the hiker made it home safe. those are the good ones.

wow this is really helpful to read, im just starting to look into joining my local ARES group and wasnt sure if it was worth the time commitment for all the training nets and stuff. sounds like when something real happens its actually meaningful work. do you need any specific certifications before they'll let you deploy or is it more up to the EC how they handle that?