K9ZLQ - ARES-RACES

ARES-RACES (Updated 02/19/2023 at 10:04 AM)

Marshall County ARES / RACES Team

Emergency Coordinator - Chuck Dilts, N9CAD

Assistant Emergency Coordinator Frank Endres, KC9OJG

aresmarcty@gmail.com

Working on EC-001

Indiana District 2, Simulated Emergency Training (SET) Exercise

Operation Rainfall 22A

1 October 2022

Chuck N9CAD EC watches as Chuck KC9PKH works the radios.

Greg W9GND works at his home station as a Liaison station.

Ruth K9RLD is recording all messages and filling in the Activity Log.

Radios and paperwork. Its all part of what we do.

MARSHALL COUNTY AMATEUR RADIO OPERATORS PARTICIPATED

IN A DISTRICT WIDE COMMUNICATIONS EXERCISE

Amateur radio operators from Indiana District 2’s emergency communications teams held a Simulated Emergency Training (SET) exercise called “Operation Rainfall 22A,” on Saturday, October 1, 2022.

This exercise was based on a simulated district wide weather-related supercell generating unprecedented heavy rainfall; flooding along the St. Joseph, Elkhart, and Yellow Rivers in District 2, in addition to numerous lightning strikes, damaging infrastructure in several D2 counties. Such events may strike with little or no notice. The slogan we all see, “When all else fails, ham radio,” would truly pickup its real meaning with a full communications infrastructure outage.

Operation Rainfall 22A allowed teams from various counties in District 2 to test their ability to communicate with other local Districts, the Marshall County Emergency Management Agency, and Indiana Homeland Security using only amateur radio equipment. In addition, individual amateur radio operators assisted in gathering health and welfare and operational messages and provided them to the State using various voice and digital methods. The Team tested their capability to provide health and welfare messaging for residents. This is a long-standing tradition allowing a resident to relay a message such as, “I’m ok,” to their friends or family outside of the impacted area using a national traffic system.

This exercise encompassed radio communications teams from services such as the ARRL’s ARES (Amateur Radio Emergency Service), Marshall County Emergency Management Agency.

This exercise ran from 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM EDT on Oct 1, 2022, at the Marshall County Emergency Operation Center (EOC).