101206 exchange with KB8SFR - jjmcd/ARPSC GitHub Wiki

I had an email exchage with KB8SFR recently. He brings up some interesting points. Any comments?

From: "Charlie Chapman" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Cc: <[email protected]>
Subject: RE: [MIARPSC] Upcoming Projects/Issues/Exercise
Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2010 11:53:42 -0500

Yeah, use anything that you think might help.  But I'm pretty familiar with
at least three districts and it's a shame how little gets coordinated and
shared.  And then the mess that you have up north speaks volumes!  I can't
believe that we don't even share contact lists district wide, let alone
statewide.  Do you have any idea how you would get a hold of someone in
about 60 of the 83 counties?  And then there are places that have additional
programs (like Battle Creek).... but that's a whole other issue!  HA!
Although were probably ahead of the curve exchanging information over here,
the adjoining districts and the adjoining states might as well be on the
other side of the moon.

Wait wait wait, I almost forgot my certainty that we will never be used as
emergency communicators.  Ever.  We might get used for damage assessment and
Skywarn, but I've already outlived a few people that I made that bet with.

Have a good day; I'm kind of keeping up through Facebook ... et al.

Charlie

-----Original Message-----
From: John J. McDonough [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Saturday, December 04, 2010 9:56 AM
To: Charlie Chapman
Subject: RE: [MIARPSC] Upcoming Projects/Issues/Exercise

On Fri, 2010-11-05 at 08:05 -0400, Charlie Chapman wrote:

> I would just set the dates for upcoming drills as you have them.
> Someone is always going to have an issue, no matter when you schedule
> it and besides: isn't that why you have assistants and depth charts?

I seem to have a knack for scheduling things in conflict with other
significant events.  However, I have kind of accepted the idea that
putting a stake in the ground early is a better plan.

> Particularly after studying the recommended IS course, I think that at
> least three of the drills should be smaller tests of specific skill,
> like the HF digital test was and the packet test a few years ago. 

Absolutely.  We have tried to focus on some skills each exercise,
although exercises that involve everyone are hard to conceive.  Lately
I've been thinking about regional exercises or perhaps specific subsets.
The counties with nukes get plenty of practice (although sometimes it
doesn't show), but many of the others don't.  And sometimes counties you
wouldn't think of have commonalities that might be useful to exploit.

> #1.  Know your neighbor.  Ask each EC to contact their counterpart in
> each adjoining county (they could even do it from home).  Simple
> enough, but I could never get guys off their ass to even find out who
> the EC was in the very next county if it was in another district.  It
> might force them to find out their Sop's for frequency use,
> activation, training level, etc.  I've said it time and again; if we
> need mutual aid for damage assessment or a specific mode and they
> don't have that level of training, it would only cost us additional
> time.  Maybe we could start with baby steps and ask them to simply
> have them, or a designee in the case of date conflicts.  This should
> take less than an hour, and if everyone did it at approximately the
> same time it might make it even easier.  Baby (but really useful)
> steps....

I've actually been talking about this kind of thing with the DECs.
Although knowing your neighbor doesn't seem to be that much of an issue
within a district.  Interesting, though, when the next county is in a
different district.

> #2.  MPSCS.  The outcome I would look for here is the relationship
> that would be required between each OEM and their ARES/RACES group.
> In order to get your hands on that radio and to be a registered user
> on the system you really need to be accepted by our primary served
> agency, and as you know too well, a lot of groups that consider
> themselves ARES/RACES wouldn't even be recognized in their EOC.

I think that more ECs will get those radios after the expansion gets a
bit further along, but it is hard to make the case when we are totally
out of IDs.  I like YZA's idea, though, of the DEC becoming an
instructor.  We do need to be more conversant in that system.  The
message from MSP is changing, though, and fewer EMs don't recognize
their ECs.  They are getting a pretty strong message.

But this also scares the shit out of me.  A couple of weeks ago at a
meeting of agency ECs I mentioned some places where we could help with
concerns raised by SoS and Corrections (of all things).  But when
Captain Nix started looking at me when he was raising concerns about
being able to deploy troopers, I got quite worried.  The scope of his
problem is so large I see no way we could effectively help.

> #3.  Speaking of EOC's ..  How about a simple EOC to EOC, or EOC to
> SEOC.  Not a full blown exercise like the SET, maybe just two people
> at their own EOC for an hour or so establishing a link between
> facilities.  The skills that this would prove would be to establish
> access to buildings during non-business hours, maybe encourage a
> little more work on the EOC station, and of course the ability of that
> station to work!   HAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!................

A surprising number of districts do this fairly regularly.  This wasn't
raised by me but came up from within the districts.  Although I am
terribly frustrated by the lack of response of most of the DECs, clearly
most of them are getting more engaged and actually thinking
independently.  Now if we could just get the ECs to also think for
themselves!

> There are three easy ideas.  One of the problems with our annual SET
> (IMHO) is that we try to do so much, and doing them all at once after
> never establishing the building blocks to get there.  You know, baby
> steps ...

You are absolutely right with that.  A few months ago I was thinking our
four exercise plan was ideal.  But the more I think about it, the more I
realize that we need a series of, as you say, baby steps.  I've been
noodling the concept of perhaps having a tabletop over Vyew, perhaps per
district, perhaps followed by a drill or two, leading up to the NLE.
I'm still a little bit in the air about what specific skills I would
like to exploit, although I raised a couple during the first meeting on
preparing for the NLE.  Unfortunately, I got little input from the DECs,
in spite of repeated requests, so I had to pull a few out of the air.

Next week I will be meeting with the agencies on laying out the three
year exercise plan for the state.  The following week will be meeting
two of the NLE, at which we hope to take some of the proposed skills the
agencies wanted to test and begin framing our scenario.  I am hoping
these will help give me some clarity as to what we should be developing.

There is just so much to do, and it is so complex, but somehow what we
present to the ECs needs to end up being straightforward, and help them
see the kind of leadership they need to provide for their members.

Charlie, if you don't object, I'd like to post this dialog to the DEC's
wiki to hopefully drive a little more conversation.

73 de WB8RCR

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