Thursday, March 29, 2012

Big Shakeout 2012...

So, I'm getting emails and newsletters from the local municipality, HAM groups, news outlets and religious organizations all announcing their participation in the Big Shakeout, otherwise known and an earthquake drill.

I've participated in the past in these "drills" in one form or another and other than mobilizing people in neighborhoods to realize that they actually have neighbors I view this as nothing more than a marketing and advertising effort by various "emergency services" groups across the the state.

My experience overall has been negative, whether it is handing out bottled water to people driving up to some point-of-distribution or manning a radio station to report the number of bottles given out, I see little in the way of preparedness and education about the possibilities of disaster.
Generally, from my view, it seems that various officials collect in central locations to warmup coffee pots, computers and flat screen monitors in EOCs and situation centers to run through the mundane tasks of locating, dusting off and reading through tabletop exercise plans.
The result is the written up as a news release to the press, patting each other on the back and talk about "lessons learned" which will be forgotten before next year, shut it all down and go home that afternoon and forget all about it, thus ticking another box on a goal sheet somewhere and filing a report.

The view from the field does nothing to influence this perspective in any way. The reality is and will be, people will panic, they will frantically grasp for available resources and EOCs may never even have the lights turned on in the event of a real life situation.
This exercise will go down as a bunch of folks all congratulating each other on a job well done, releasing that press report and failing to remind people in the field the exercise is actually complete. Add in the squabbling by various local HAMs about the FCC rules regarding the use of Amateur Band Frequencies by agencies, ambiguous still thanks to the failure of the FCC to clarify, and you are back to relying on technologies like cellular voice and data that will most certainly be overwhelmed.
So, what will you be doing during the Big Shakeout?

Dust off your radios and get your grab-and-go ready, don't forget to charge the batteries in your little-rascal scooter too...

Have you had a different experience?

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Location:Big Shakeout 2012

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