so i finally got activated for real last month, not just a drill. there was some pretty bad flooding in our county and the EOC asked our group to come in and support the shelter coordination. ive been doing ARES training exercises for like two years and i thought i had a decent idea of what it would be like but honestly the real thing is just... different.

the nets ran pretty smoothly actually, our EC has drilled us well on net discipline and keeping traffic concise. but there were a few moments where i was handling message traffic and i caught myself second guessing the format - like i knew the ICS 213 stuff but when youre actually doing it under some pressure and someone is waiting on you it felt a little different than the drill. ended up being fine but it made me realize how much the repetition matters.

anyway just wanted to share, also curious if anyone else has tips for newer emcomm operators on stuff that helped them feel more prepared when the real thing happened. the training is good but i feel like theres always something that surprises you

yeah the first real activation is always a bit of a gut check regardless of how much training youve done. i think the ICS form stuff specifically is one of those things where you just need reps, like actual reps not just reading about it. we started doing a thing at our monthly meetings where we just practice filling them out under a time limit and it sounds dumb but it helped a lot of the newer folks get that muscle memory down before they needed it for real.

the other thing that surprised me early on was just the waiting - activations can have a lot of hurry up and wait and you need to stay mentally on even when nothing is happening for a stretch. glad your first one went well though, those flood events can be pretty intense for the served agencies

thats really cool that you got activated, most of our group hasnt had a real one in a few years so we kind of just do the SET and some tabletops. makes me want to push our EC to maybe coordinate with the county more proactively. did your group have a pre-established relationship with the shelter people or was some of that figured out on the fly?