so after about 8 months of going to the monthly ARES nets and doing the online ICS training (which honestly took way longer than i expected to finish) i finally got my first real activation last weekend. county had a pretty bad storm roll through friday night and the EC called us up to provide backup comms for the county EOC and one of the shelter locations about 12 miles out.

i was assigned to the shelter and honestly i was way more nervous than i thought id be. its one thing to check in on the weekly net and do tabletop exercises but when someone actually hands you a message form and says get this to the EOC i kind of froze for a second. the traffic was pretty light thankfully — mostly resource requests and some health/welfare stuff — but it felt real in a way that none of the training exercises did.

the thing that surprised me most was how much of the job is just... waiting. and staying ready. and making sure your radio is on the right freq and your battery is topped off and you're not in the way of the shelter staff. i kind of expected it to be more hectic i guess. anyway just wanted to share since ive seen a few posts from people wondering what an actual activation is like vs. the training side of things. happy to answer questions if anyone has em

that waiting thing is so real and i dont think anyone really prepares new operators for it. i've been doing ARES stuff for close to 12 years now and i still tell people — bring a book, bring snacks, charge everything twice. the activation where you're slammed with traffic every 10 minutes is the exception not the rule. most of the time you're sitting there monitoring and drinking bad shelter coffee hoping nothing major happens, which honestly is the best case scenario anyway.

sounds like you handled it well though. that moment of freezing when you get your first real message is completely normal, everyone goes through it. the important thing is your training kicked in and you got it done. the ICS stuff feels like overkill when youre sitting in a classroom but when you're actually in an EOC and someone's using the terminology it all clicks.

keep going to the nets, keep your quals current, and if your EC does any go-kit exercises or simulated emergency tests make sure you show up for those. SET in the fall is good practice too if your section does a serious one.

this is really helpful to read honestly. im in the middle of doing my ICS 100 and 700 right now because our local ARES group requires them before you can even get on the call list and i keep second-guessing whether its worth all the time. hearing that it actually makes sense when you're in the middle of a real activation is kind of reassuring. did you use any particular net format at the shelter or was it just informal check-ins with the EOC?