N1IN
MARS WinLink in Tennessee Storms
Those tornados that swept across the Mid South Feb. 5 and 6 carried Army MARS
into a new era of operations. For the first time as far back as we can
remember, a state government called for MARS deployment in response to an
actual emergency. The resulting teamwork gave the Tennessee Emergency
Management Agency—TEMA—its only e-mail link during President Bush’s visit to
the storm-stricken area. That link was the army MARS WinLink 2000 Radio e-mail
system.
Stuart S. Carter, the Army MARS Chief, gave a full account of the MARS tornado
response on his biweekly broadcast to members Feb. 15. Compiled from several
after-action reports, Carter’s account follows verbatim.
On Tuesday, 5 Feb 08, Region 4 Director Jim Hamilton (AAA4RD) was watching the
weather on TV and based on the developing storm, called Tennessee SD Chris
Bindrim (AAA4TN), to place TN Army MARS on alert. A short time after calling
Bindrim, Hamilton received an email from David Wolfe, AAR4CY, (Chief of
Communication for the TN Emergency Management Agency (TEMA), State RACES
Officer, and an Army MARS member) requesting TN Army MARS be placed on standby
for possible support to TEMA. In addition to calling Bindrim, Hamilton also
called Kentucky SD Barry Jackson (AAA4KY) who was already alerting Kentucky
Army MARS members to stand-by for possible emergency support to officials in
Kentucky. What I just told you Jim Moore, Great Falls, MT, AAM8AMT is that
before the Tornados struck, the preparatory alerts were sent to Region 4 SDs
and members to “Prepare and Stand by to assist.”
This event illustrates the importance of detailed preparation and training
which has taken place during realistic disaster response exercises over the
past several years. In the case of TN, the story goes back a year and a half.
Steve Waterman (AAA9AC) began working with TEMA’s David Wolfe, preparing for
just such a deployment. At the time, Army MARS was just beginning to adopt the
Winlink 2000 radio e-mail network system, and with the assistance of the then
TN State Director, Paul Drothler, AAV4DJ, Army MARS had just signed a
Memorandum of Understanding with TEMA. This MOU just served to strengthen an
already strong relationship between TEMA and Army MARS.
Next, Wolfe led TEMA staffers who were already hams to becoming MARS members
and to become qualified MARS WinLink 2000 operators. The rest of Wolfe’s team
soon obtained their amateur radio and Army MARS licenses.
The next step was joint training for TEMA staff and TN Army MARS members. Some
was classroom training followed up with extensive field training. The
culmination of the field training was TNCAT07, a massive exercise, which
included the Central United States Earthquake Consortium (CUSEC, an 8 state
alert consortium along the New Madras fault line). This exercise also included
the participation by ARRL Amateur Emergency Radio Service (ARES), CAP and other
EMCOM services, which clearly demonstrated interoperability between TEMA, TN
Army MARS, the amateur radio community, and other municipal communications
services. You have just heard that Army MARS was integrating and training with
virtually all of the EMCOM services in TN. That was what this CAM calls leaning
forward and TCAMO.
As the situation developed Tuesday, the dispersed pattern of the multiple
twisters and their swift movement meant local communications systems were able
to cope. Painful as the casualty and damage figures were, from the commo
viewpoint this was not the wide-area wipeout associated with a force 5
hurricane. Army MARS resources weren’t needed until Friday.
Steve Waterman, AAA9AC, received a phone call from TEMA on Thursday night, 7
Feb 08, summoning him to the Tennessee Emergency Operations Center in
Nashville, and MARS station AAN4ETN, at 6:30 AM Friday morning
TEMA’s Command bus was summoned to an airport in Macon County Thursday night,
approximately 140 miles east of Nashville, where President Bush was flying to
make his announcement of declaring TN a disaster area, and offering federal
support. Wolfe, headed the TEMA on-scene logistics operation, and provided us
this report, and I quote: “The facts are: although there was no commercial
power at the deployment site, TEMA’s communications infrastructure was fully
operational. Both the VHF high band and 800 MHz repeater systems had good
coverage for voice command and control. Our shortage was internet connectivity,
and our unmet needs were e-mail and the ability to send pictures. MARS WinLink
provided exactly what was not available by any other means. We also utilized it
to reduce the ‘chatter’ on our C2 nets by sending short event notices direct to
TEMA operations.”
AAA9AC’s After Action Report from Nashville listed 70 messages originated
during the state operation. They ranged from casualty figure updates and signal
reports to staff rosters and photos.
I’m indebted to Steve Waterman for pointing out that operationally speaking,
this was not just a Tennessee communications job. Close-in HF propagation was
less than optimal, so much of the traffic was directed to an Army MARS Radio
Messaging Station in Montana, AAB8MT, operated by Jim Moore, AAM8AMT. That was
real-world demonstration of the WinLink’s adaptability to challenging
circumstances, including Mother Nature’s fickle propagation.
To make a long story short, we now have a “Real-World” demonstration of
seamless collaboration between Army MARS and one of our supported agencies
under emergency conditions. This was the first real world deployment since the
Katrina/Rita disasters two years ago. Successfully meeting the challenge
involved deployment readiness on the part of our members, and it required total
WinLink 2000 mobility. First of all came the building of relationships with
existing and potential customers, and then came meticulous training of state
and federal staffers, and frequent exercising at home and in the field. With
this pattern of established collaboration between our customers and MARS
members, we enter the new era of Army MARS Emergency communications support.
Stuart S. Carter, Chief Army MARS
____________________________________________________________________________________
Be a better friend, newshound, and
know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now.
http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ
