2016 Presenter: Glenn Lindsey VA7HC What were you doing at 1139 - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Presentation – April 19, 2016

Presenter: Glenn Lindsey VA7HC

What were you doing at 1139 hours on Tuesday December 29, 2015?

4.8 magnitude earthquake hits Victoria area

What did you do immediately afterwards?

Contact the WARA 146.840 repeater perhaps?

An Invitation to a DISASTER . . .

WHO’s invited? YOU - a convergent volunteer WHEN’s the date? Saturday June 4, 2016 WHERE’s it happening? In the area wide emergency OPS centres HOW can I get involved? Listen to 146.840 on June 4th morning WHY? EOCs will need convergent volunteers in a disaster WHAT’s happening? #1 A disaster radio exercise with EMBC HOW LONG is it? Three hours – 0900-1200 hours WHEN can I get training? VEMA training centre – Wed. May 11th

. . . Radio Exercise

WHAT’s happening? #2 WARA Red Cross EMCOMMs involved

The Culprit

Sources of Seismic Hazard in British Columbia: What Controls Earthquakes in the Crust Natalie Joy Balfour – University of Victoria - 2011

The Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) must be able to function on a 24 / 7 basis from activation until de-mobilization as required to support the emergency response.

Emergency Operations Centre Operational Guidelines – 2nd Edition

The Convergent Volunteer

Local amateurs that can make their way to where they

are needed can be helpful in working with existing teams. They can be much more helpful if they get some initial training in how the EOC operates, e.g.  Packet and PACTOR messaging  The Winlink system and accessing it through  Remote Message Server (RMS)  The use of templates for standard messages  Voice message passing  Basic logging requirements

A magnitude 9.0 earthquake has resulted from a rupture

• f the Cascadia Subduction Zone off the coast
• f southwestern B.C. Strong shaking lasting several

minutes has occurred in areas of Greater Vancouver, Greater Victoria and central Vancouver Island, causing some destruction in the major urban centres and widespread damage in the Port Alberni valley. The earthquake also generated a tsunami on the west coast of Vancouver Island minutes after the initial shock. [Text copied from Coastal Response flyer].

June 7-10, 2016

BC government’s Exercise Coastal Response exercise

June 7-10, 2016

This exercise will be a four-day, full-scale functional exercise in Port Alberni, B.C. and will include real-time activities and simulated situations involving certain functions, such as emergency operations, logistics, medical care, mass care, public information and operational communications.

• 18 per cent of buildings in the CRD are most likely to receive

extensive damage and 11 per cent are most likely to receive complete damage

• The injury rate, including non-severe, severe non-life threatening, and severe

life threatening is 52 injuries per 1000 people in the CRD and Metro Vancouver [potential 15,000 injuries in CRD]

• Number of fatalities: 4 per 1000 people in the CRD and Metro Vancouver

[1,200 fatalities in the CRD]

• 4 per cent of the population of the CRD will require short-term shelter, with the

most extreme requirements in the downtown area and Esquimalt. [12,000 people in the CRD require shelter]

• Common communication service providers may be impacted heavily, regardless of

communication technology provided, including cellular, landline, radio and satellite

• If service is available, the network may be overloaded, making communication

extremely challenging

• Radio communication, if operable, may be congested and impact

the ability of first responders

“12,000 people in the CRD will probably require shelter”

Displaced residents from Japan’s Kyushu magnitude 7.3 earthquake – April 15, 2016

Mobile networks damage caused by Japan’s Fukushima mag 9 megathrust earthquake

 In the CRD area, many older buildings have

collapsed in the downtown and built-up areas of all municipalities.

 In the Electoral Areas, the tsunami has inundated

low-lying sections of the West Coast Road and a number of campers at French Beach and Jordan River are feared to have been caught in the tsunami.

 There has been significant damage to infrastructure

such as hydro transmission poles, water and gas lines, and communications towers.

Roles of the municipalities and electoral areas

 Each municipality opens an EOC to deal with the disaster. According to their available resources, they will activate additional communications equipment e.g., Go-Boxes in reception centres, mobile Incident Command Posts, or communications vans.  CRD activates its radio room and contacts its client groups in the Juan de Fuca, Salt Spring Island, and the Southern Gulf Islands.  EMBC activates its Keating Road PREOC.

 Each group designs a detailed evolution of the scenario within their municipality or EA, including appropriate traffic such as SITREPs, requests for resources, and tactical messaging e.g., “the fire department has been notified”. There also could be damage reports from hams in the municipality.

How do we prepare for the exercise?

 There will be traffic between EOCs and EMBC, such as Declaration of State of Emergency, SITREPs and requests for Task

• Numbers. Traffic (RMS and/or Pactor) with EMBC should be by

WL2K packet to the maximum extent possible.  There can be formal and informal messaging between EOCs. Informal messaging should be originated by operators, e.g. “Do you still have power at your location?” while formal voice or packet messaging can also occur, e.g. resource requests “Esquimalt requests use of a pumper truck from Victoria Public Works”.

 All formal messages should be written out in advance and passed to the radio teams on appropriate forms (i.e. trying to mimic what might actually happen in an EOC – at times formal message forms can be completed by the sender, at other times the sender can simply write out the message and give it to the operator, in an emergency the sender might want to dictate the message to a message clerk or the operator, depending on the situation).  Informal or tactical messages shouldn’t be written out, but the

• perators should be encouraged to communicate tactical messages, e.g.

“tell the comms van to go to Yates and Douglas and report to the incident commander”.  The operators will be encouraged to be verbal with their own situations to each other, e.g. “you’ll have to go slower; I am the only one here until the EOC can get someone else down here to assist”.

How do we prepare? (continued)

How do we prepare? (More!)

Date: e: Wednesday May 11, 2016 Loc

• cat

atio ion: : Fire Hall #1, 1234 Yates Street Enter ter vi via: The back door accessible from Camosun Street Time: ime: 6:45 pm RSVP VP to VE7VAW@rac.ca (so we can plan to accommodate you) Call ll-in in frequency uency is 146.475 simplex

Convergent Volunteer TRAINING

A short history of Disaster Radio Exercises in the CRD

 October 2015 – VEMA and CRD teams run some initial exercises  November 2015 – Oak Bay joins VEMA and CRD for a second exercise  December 2015 – Esquimalt joins for a third exercise  February 2016 – VE7PEP (EMBC) joins for a fourth exercise  April 2016 – An Invitation is sent all municipalities and electoral areas to join the June 4, 2016 exercise  The development of these disaster radio exercises has been evolutionary and is unique to British Columbia

An early example of a disaster radio script

Radio Message Form

voice messaging exercise example

Request for Resources sent by packet radio to EMBC during an exercise

Station Chart for February 10th Exercise

Some statistics from February 10th exercise

Total number of radio operators - 32

# VE7PEP radio operators - 4 # VE7VOP radio operators - 8 # VE7CRD radio operators - 8 # VA7JDF radio operators - 2 # VE7EEP radio operators - 4 # VE7OEP radio operators - 6

Photographs – EMBC (VE7PEP)

Photographs – Victoria (VE7VOP)

Photographs – CRD (VE7CRD)

Photographs – JdF EOC (VA7JDF)

Photographs – Oak Bay (VE7OEP)

Photographs – Esquimalt (VE7EEP)

You are invited to a Disaster Radio Exercise

WHO’s invited? YOU - a convergent volunteer WHEN’s the date? Saturday June 4, 2016 WHERE’s it happening? In the area wide emergency OPS centres HOW can I get involved? Listen to 146.840 on June 4th morning WHY? EOCs will need convergent volunteers in a disaster WHAT’s happening? #1 A disaster radio exercise with EMBC HOW LONG is it? Three hours – 0900-1200 hours WHEN can I get training? VEMA training centre – Wed. May 11th WHAT’s happening? #2 WARA Red Cross EMCOMMs involved

The Convergent Volunteer

What’s in it for me?

 Support WARA by listening to 146.840 for “Exercise, exercise, exercise” on June 4, 2016  Engage directly in a meaningful Disaster Radio exercise  Participate in an Emergency Operations Centre  Personal growth as a radio amateur  Learn packet radio – VHF, UHF, HF  Learn formal written message passing  Prepare for “The Big One” as a radio amateur