CARES Report on the December, 1996 Rough and Ready Exercise
3/05/1997
Rough & Ready 96 was a "no-fault" exercise designed to provide training to participants and evaluation of systems, and this is a "no-fault" communications report. This was a significant "first" in emergency medical communications in California with civilian, military, and associated radio communications systems coming together for the first time to attempt to improve disaster response efforts. Many opportunities for improvement will be noted in this report, but all managers and operators should be commended for overcoming operating problems in R&R-96 and effecting an excellent radio communications system during this exercise.
A number of technical radio issues emerged in the exercise. Since these are not generally of interest to disaster management, they will not be covered in this report, and a separate radio operator's report is appended.
Individual reports on the exercise were filed by the CARES exercise managers in Sacramento, Berkeley, USPHS-SF, March AFB, and LA Mobile operations, and have been consolidated into this report. This report does not include the perspective of the Civil Air Patrol, the California National Guard, or the California Blood Bank Radio System, who are preparing their own reports.
At the request of EMSA, we created an "Executive Summary" of the R&R-96 communications report in mid-January, for placement of communications issues in their overall report. While the recommendations in that summary are generally contained in this more comprehensive report, the wording is different and they are not all inclusive. You may see those recommendations in other documents.
California Amateur Radio Emergency Services (CARES) provides disaster radio communications support to departments in the State Health and Welfare Agency. CARES primary mission is to provide radio communications between the State OES Regional Emergency Operations Center (REOC), the Sacramento based medical and health Joint Emergency Operations Center (JEOC), the field based military and civilian Unified Military Operations Center (UMOC), and various State department emergency operations centers. CARES was asked to provide communications support to the State Emergency Medical Services (EMSA) sponsored Disaster Medical Assistance Teams (DMAT) exercise titled "Rough and Ready 1996." The exercise was held at Los Alamitos AFB near Long Beach and March AFB near Riverside on December 13-14, 1996. While CARES would not normally provide communications to a field treatment site and associated operations, the R&R-96 field exercise locations were the same as the Southern California REOC (Los Alamitos AFB) and proposed UMOC (March AFB). CARES base operations in Sacramento (same location as JEOC) and Berkeley, and the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) radio station in San Francisco were also planned for activation for the exercise. The State Blood Bank communications system (CBBS) planned a concurrent exercise to interface with the DMAT exercise on December 13-14.
CARES had participated in two prior DMAT exercises at Camp Roberts near Paso Robles, California for which communications reports are available. Experience in those exercises suggested that CARES would be used almost exclusively for exercise command and control, and to provide backup for military communications systems which had problems in both Camp Roberts DMAT exercises. Covering these activities in the past exercises significantly diminished CARES ability to also conduct statewide radio communications tests.
At early planning sessions for the exercise, the California National Guard (CNG) reported that they would be using the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) Communications group for various assignments at the exercise. In addition to providing logistic communications for the movement of CAP Cadets who would be acting as mock casualties in the exercise, the CNG would be using CAP communicators to back up military communications - a role previously carried out by CARES. CNG advised EMSA and CARES that this would probably be a planned tasking of CAP communications in a real military medical response to a major disaster in California.
Subsequent to the initial meetings, the military and civilian exercise controllers and the CAP and CARES managers discussed the CAP-CARES communications capabilities, and decided to modify the communications part of the exercise to test the interoperability of the two groups and potentially develop a model communications plan that could expand to other California operational regions. It was agreed that CAP would take responsibility for all exercise command and control communications, and would collocate with CARES at the UMOC at March AFB, the JEOC in Sacramento, and the participating Berkeley and San Francisco radio stations. The addition of the CBBS radio stations and the Patton State Hospital amateur radio station near San Bernardino made Rough and Ready 1996 a major communications exercise.
The addition of CAP communications to the DMAT exercise permitted CARES to concentrate on developing a general statewide communications exercise. Three scenarios were developed to provide some realism to the exercise - 1) a request for blood supplies, 2) a request for nurses for Red Cross shelters, and 3) a request for medical supply kits. In a real Los Angeles area disaster, these requests would be made from the affected California counties to the REOC (Los Alamitos AFB), which would pass the request to the UMOC (March AFB) and JEOC (Sacramento) for acquisition and delivery. Civilian (EMSA) and military (CNG) representatives are present at all three locations.
In addition to the major State EOC locations, CARES operates a radio station in Berkeley which supports the State DHS public health laboratory and general communications with other San Francisco Bay Area State and local governmental agencies. The US Public Health Service in San Francisco has an Amateur Radio station which is closely coordinated with CARES. The California Blood Bank Radio System has nine Amateur Radio stations which support local California blood banks, and network with CARES to provide statewide radio communications. Other Amateur Radio operations within a disaster area typically provide communications liaison and backup to medical and health response, In this case Patton State Hospital in Riverside participated directly, and Orange County RACES and Riverside County RACES provided repeater support. All of these additional radio operations were included in the exercise scenario as communications links for the support of the three medical acquisition efforts described above. Exercise messages were developed to stimulate activities at all the statewide radio stations and provide the foundation for additional radio traffic during the exercise.
The California Blood Bank System ran a parallel exercise designed to interface with R&R-96 exercise on December 14. During the week of December 9-13, California blood banks gathered a list of available blood supplies at participating blood banks and transmitted the lists via telephone or radio to the Sacramento Blood Bank which consolidated the lists and transmitted them to CARES at Los Alamitos and March AFB's as part of the blood acquisition scenario.
The Civil Air Patrol co-located their radio communications systems at all of the major simulated EOC locations and the Berkeley and SF CARES operations, as well as opening a relay site at Travis AFB in Fairfield, to support parallel communications to CARES for all simulated events. While not directly related to the civilian exercise scenarios, particular note should be made that without the CAP communications support of exercise logistics and military backup communications, CARES could not have effected the rest of the communications exercise.
All of the radio stations set up on Friday, December 13, and conducted communications tests to assure that communications were working well for the main exercise on Saturday, December 14, and to resolve any communications system conflicts between CARES, CAP and military communications systems.
At Los Alamitos, the location of communications facilities were significantly modified from the written plans. The DMAT tent which was to house exercise logistic communications was not available for that purpose, and logistics was moved to a military building. This facility was to have CARES and CAP local VHF communications. The CARES communications tent which was to be set up at a location chosen by CARES for HF radio operation was also not available and the main CARES HF site was set up on a picnic table which turned out to be the planned main feeding site for the CAP volunteers.
At March AFB, the CARES operators were detained at the main gate, as the guard had no information on the exercise. Fortunately, one of the CARES members had a military base pass which permitted entry and the March AFB CARES group was able to get to their operating site and set up for tests.
At both Los Alamitos and March, communications management between CARES, CAP, and CNG could have been better. While preplanning helped and the three organizations felt comfortable prior to the exercise, the lack of some sort of communications ICS system left each group operating independently and caused minor confusion and disorganization. Fortunately, each organization had preplanned coverage and fulfilled their responsibilities with no disruption to the DMAT exercise. All parties agreed that communications planning and management needs to be strengthened if the groups are to operate together successfully.
Facilities at Los Alamitos were a significant problem. While the main military communications tent was new and spacious, there were no tables or chairs and operators had to set up radios on containers and sit on whatever makeshift seats they could fashion. The vision of a modern military-civilian joint communications center was abandoned as each group sought out an adequate communications site. Coordination between communications sites was generally through foot travel or VHF radios, and since each operation uses different frequencies a central coordination location staffed by all parties was sorely missed.
While ad-hoc adjustments to communications plans are normal in a disaster setting, and all radio stations were able to successfully conduct the Friday tests, better planning and coordination would result in a smoother operation.
We recommend that EMSA and CNG convene a meeting of the CNG, CAP, and CARES communications managers to discuss approaches to improving our radio communications and solving problems that occurred in R&R-96.
With the benefit of the Friday set-up and testing (a luxury we would not ordinarily have), and the redundant communications systems of CARES, CAP, and CNG; all communications went well and any radio propagation failures were quickly plugged by one of the redundant systems.
While traffic was passed effectively by all participating stations in both northern and southern California, there are some suggestions for improvement:
1. For the most part, all traffic was sent over voice channels. This was very time consuming and tied up what should be conversational channels with messages and data that could be better handled via digital modes. We need to spend more time on implementing packet, amtor-pactor-gtor-clover, public and government data systems, and military digital systems.
2. We didn't effectively use the Patton station, local RACES groups, the hospital nets, or the individual Blood Bank stations in the Saturday events. If we are to keep up their interest and build an emergency medical radio system, we need to provide better exercise activities for them.
3. All groups used different radio and antenna systems with different results. It would be helpful for the radio operators to discuss these issues. The technical addendum to this report might facilitate some discussion, and the managerial meeting discussed above could have that as an agenda item.
4. Evidently some CAP resources planned for use in the exercise were diverted to real search and rescue operations that materialized in the days preceding the exercise. While these diversions did not significantly impact the exercise, they point up the need to pursue the official commitment of CAP communications for disaster medical response. We understand that CNG and State OES are working on this issue.
5. In all of our exercises over the years, CARES operators travel by private vehicles to the simulated disaster locations prior to the exercise. In a real event, this will probably not be practical. We need to work on alternative transportation plans for radio operators in a real disaster.
6. While the CAP and CARES communications managers worked closely together for some time prior to the exercise, the radio operators in several locations had little opportunity to meet and coordinate prior to the exercise. In some cases, their first contact was on exercise day, and preconceptions about equipment and operations didn't materialize. In all reports from CARES operators, the relations with CAP were friendly and positive. We need to work on getting the line radio operators coordinating on a regular basis.
7. CARES tested a satellite phone system during R&R-96 in Los Alamitos which was recently purchased by EMSA. While a satellite phone is not normally a tool of CARES and requires no license to operate, it did prove useful in coordinating radio operations. We were able to use the phone to contact CARES Sacramento and USPHS-SF for exercise coordination issues. In the event of propagation changes which cause radio operations to lose frequency coordination, or when private conversations are necessary and phone systems are down, the satellite phone is very useful.
We intended to test the satellite phone in digital mode, but fortunately didn't have time. Tests subsequent to the exercise were unsuccessful, and it turns out that a digital license must be added to the current EMSA contract to enable digital operations.
CARES should assure that the satellite phone is taken along on disaster area operations, and EMSA should enable the digital operation.
8. The integration of CARES, CAP, CNG, and CBBS operations again brought up the issue of different message forms and different tracking and reporting forms. We recommend that any future coordination meetings address the issue of common forms.
Reports from the CARES exercise managers in the above locations indicate that operations went very well at their end. Coordination and cooperation from CAP were uniformly praised, and all radio communications were handled well. Issues were primarily technical and operational and are covered in the technical addendum to this report.
1. During exercise planning, and meetings with the Regional Disaster Medical and Health Coordinators, the lack of an Internet bulletin board and e-mail resource has been identified as an obstacle to disaster planning, coordination, and response.
We recommend that the CARES Radio Officer establish an Internet Web presence at EMSA for posting of communications information, e-mail, and file transfer. Additionally, EMSA should encourage all county and regional emergency medical services organizations to provide their radio communications staff with Internet capabilities.
2. Acronyms, abbreviations, and unique labels caused confusion during the exercise. We recommend that a complete dictionary of EMSA-CNG disaster related terms and their meanings be published and maintained.
Because of the continued commitment of CARES and CAP volunteer radio operators, their practice in field amateur radio exercises, experimentation in new radio communications systems, and participation in emergency networks and exercises, all radio message communications in the R&R exercise were completed and documented. CARES considers this exercise to be a validation of the value of Civil Air Patrol and Amateur Radio for disaster medical and health communications.
Issues in this section involve technical and operational problems encountered by the radio operators during R&R-96, and are not intended to be necessarily intelligible to a non-radio operator. Some of the recommendations below are short term projects that a CARES member could volunteer for (hint).
1. Frequency lists and planning - internal and external
It is apparent that better knowledge of the operating frequencies and modes of the different communications elements (CARES, CAP, CNG, local RACES, hospital nets, etc.) would be of benefit, and that will be a future project of CARES. In addition, CARES itself has no established frequency plans and seems to set up a new plan for each exercise. This causes problems when physically separate stations lose contact, and certainly would be a major problem in an instant activation and mobilization. CARES needs to have a solid and stable frequency plan.
2. Operating aids
Station and field equipment manuals need to be checked out and short-form how-to-operate guides need to be written for station equipment and modes. Areas where needs exist are:
Packet operations Amtor-Pactor Profs Local Area Network ZIP - encryption Uuencoding Communications software Station frequency lists, phone numbers, cell phone numbers, pager numbers, contact lists, etc. need to be updated and posted in all stations (and contained in all field kits).
3. Emergency frequency flexibility
With the collocation of multiple radio operations, the issue of "out-of-band" radio operations needs to be re-addressed. In several cases during R&R-96, operation of one agencies radio for another agencies purpose, or operation of one agencies radio by a radio operator from another agency was necessary. While the FCC regulations permit almost any operation of a radio when there is a direct threat to life or property, most agencies frown (to put it mildly) on such use in an exercise setting.
Our problem arises from the possibility that one agencies radio may be the only one functional in one location, and an entirely different radio might be the only one operational in another location. In Los Alamitos, we asked the CNG operator if his HF military radio was able to transmit on the Amateur Radio bands (specifically 7.230 mhz). We were careful to have a properly licensed CARES member present (at the controls?) and used the CNG radio to successfully pass a message to CARES Sacramento. In a real emergency, the same situation might arise between CARES and CAP both on VHF and HF, and with other digital (packet) systems.
Another issue of "marginal" operations when unlike equipment is involved is to use scanners for cross-band communications. An operator on one vhf frequency can talk to an operator on another by each one having a general purpose scanner set to receive on the opposite frequency.
There are other techniques, and many issues involved, but we should have those issues on the table, and be prepared to implement any such systems in a real disaster.
4. Operator training on digital modes
Digital training needs were very apparent during R&R-96, and brought up in every exercise manager's report. We also heard from CBBS and local RACES on the issue. Certainly we need to divert traffic like the CBBS blood supply lists to digital.
Concurrently with planning for training and practice, we need to assure that all digital modems are upgraded to the latest software version and this will be included in the equipment needs listed later in this report.
Timing seems to be a major problem, as well as (in spite of good intentions) member lack of time for practicing. Also, with the multiple agency interest in practice, the lack of a common radio medical net (more on that later) becomes a problem.
5. Antenna systems
Antenna design and use also came up in R&R-96. The Los Alamitos group accidentally were forced to set up an NVIS antenna (due to structure limitations) and swore by it's effectiveness. The type of HF antennas in use during R&R-96 ranged from the military sloper to a variety of dipole arrangements, to the "chicken-foot" and the "trap-zapper". The State OES permanent antenna at Southern Region headquarters at Los Alamitos is a B&W folded dipole (same as CARES owns) in an NVIS configuration. VHF and UHF antennas were also an issue in several reports. We need to arrive at some consistency on antennas, even if it means some field trials, before spending any money on antennas.
The same goes for masts. Everything from the CAP crankup in Sacramento to the UHQ-extendable-broom-handle.
(NVIS stands for Near Vertical Incidence Skywave, and is not an antenna, but a concept that the lower a horizontal HF antenna is placed the more vertical the signal is transmitted. Traditional Amateur Radio HF antennas are mounted to maximize distance (vertical mounting, inverted-V, or 1/2 wave elevation) and are ineffective for local (10-400 mile) disaster communications. NVIS was publicized heavily in military circles in about 1990, and four California State RACES bulletins were devoted to NVIS concepts. CARES used an NVIS mounted trap dipole at Los alamitos during R&R-96 and got good signal reports from March AFB at 50 miles and Berkeley-Sacramento at 400 miles. Interestingly, the Southern Region OES station at Los Alamitos is using a permanently mounted B&W folded dipole at about 6 ft. high (NVIS level). The military sloper antennas at R&R-96 were mostly ineffective in the 5 - 50 mile range.)
6. Statewide HF medical net
We've started discussing a medical HF net. At present we have the State OES HF Net as a general meeting place, but we also have the north-south Kaiser hospital HF net and the CBBS HF net. Patton State Hospital and CARES only use the OES HF net. As a result of publicity from the exercise, we are getting interest from DHS employees in the LA basin and Fresno. Most of the existing HF medical nets are fairly underutilized.
The lack of a common medical HF net also limits our potential to do HF digital (and other mutual aid) training, and get together on other issues.
The most effective HF medical net in terms of participation is the CBBS net. Perhaps the CBBS would consider expanding the net to other medical HF systems.
7. Repeater and relay operations
Several methods were tried (or used) during R&R-96. In Northern California, the CARES stations used the 147.195 repeater; CAP used their repeaters (including packet?), and set up a relay station at Travis AFB; and Berkeley tried the Red Cross packet cluster.
In Southern California, CAP used their local repeaters; CARES used Orange County RACES and Riverside RACES repeaters as well as a dual-band mobile radio in cross-band mode; and several local stations (including Patton) were used to relay messages.
Suggestions have been made regarding 220 and 440 statewide repeater relay systems.
Portable packet digipeaters were not tried during the exercise.
At this point members haven't discussed the issues, so this will be a subject in a future meeting.
8. Other digital systems
Once again, we relied on radios to the exclusion of other digital communication modes. While radio service is the primary contract between CARES and our sponsoring agencies, our obvious if-all-else-fails communications mode, and a sexy public relations display during exercises; it's the most inefficient communications mode available.
The computer skills of CARES members are being wasted in these exercises. We have professional network systems engineers, Internet webmasters, computer communications specialists, and computer on-line hobbyists in our organization. We talk about our ability to identify available computer networks in a disaster area and go on- line if equipment permits (with the new laptops, equipment now permits).
We also talk about ways of implementing field-to-base digital communications using packet at the field location and packet-fixed at a base location with network or phone capability.
We have practiced HF Field Day type operations for many years now, and pretty much have that down. We either need to go digital for a scheduled exercise or set up our own tests. It's the only way we'll identify equipment needs (9600 baud packet and digital radios for one item).
9. Equipment needs
a. Deep cycle 12v batteries - 6 $ $150.00
Batteries for field use purchased about 6 years ago have worn out and all batteries used for R&R-96 were privately owned. In addition, the base DHS Canco station has no back-up power.
b. VHF 9600 baud packet modems and radios - 3 @ $1000 ea.
Our existing radio modems operate at 1200 baud, and our VHF radios are not designed to transmit higher than 1200 baud. Technology now supports 9600 baud VHF transmissions. CARES objectives of supporting list traffic from field radio-digital sites to local active computer network connections in a disaster area would be much enhanced by moving to 9600 baud packet. c. HF radios - 4 @ $2,000 ea. (incl. power supply and antenna tuner)
Our existing HF radios are vintage 1988, are oversized and not computer friendly for HF digital. With insurance proceeds from a CARES equipment theft, we purchased a new Icom 706 HF-VHF radio which we field tested at R&R-96. It is perfect for base or mobile HF work, and performed very well. We recommend a scheduled replacement of existing Kenwood TS430-440 HF radios.
d. Second VHF and HF station for Canco - 2 @ $0.00
The DHS Canco station needs a second VHF and HF radio to enable strictly digital transmissions on both modes. Trying to bounce back and forth from voice to digital on one radio created difficulties during R&R-96. With the purchase of 9600 baud VHF equipment and newer HF radios, an existing radios would be freed up for voice work, making this a no-cost improvement.
e. Antenna tuners - 2 @ $150.00
Two of CARES HF antenna tuners have failed. One may be repairable. The main Canco station and one of the field HF stations are operating only because of a loan of member owned tuners.
f. Equipment repair - 3 @ $150.00
CARES has an automatic antenna tuner, a dual-band handheld radio, and a 220mhz mobil radio; all valued at over $300 each and all would be functional with minor repair.
g. Upgrade existing radio modems - 5 @ $150 ea.
Five of the seven Kantronic KAM radio modems have not been upgraded to handle current HF digital modes (Pactor - Gtor) and thus operate at significantly less throughput. We have to be very careful which modems go to each location, and depend on member's privately owned equipment to do HF digital.
h. Upgrade base station computers - 5 @ $0.00
All base stations are operating with 286 level computers, aging hard-to-read monitors, and old dot- matrix printers. With the general replacement of 386 computers in our sponsoring agencies, we should be able to obtain surplus 386 computers and first-generation ink-jet printers at no cost.
i. Antennas - 8 @ $150.00
Addition of base stations using existing antennas (Canco, G-2, EMSA) has depleted the supply of antennas normally used for field operations. CARES needs four dual-band VHF-UHF vertical antennas, two trap dipole HF antennas, and two mobile HF vertical antennas.
j. PCMCIA 3270 cards - 3 @ $350.00
The three DHS laptops are equipped with ethernet-modem combo PCMCIA cards for connection to telephone and PC LAN systems. An additional option necessary to implement field attachment to HWDC-Teale dumb-terminal systems is a 3270 card.
k. Earphones - 6 @ $150.00
With multiple operations now common at field locations and in base stations (eg. R&R-96 CAP-CNG-CARES operations), we need decent quality radio headsets with boom-mikes.