After Action Report
12/27/06 District 10

Submitted by:

Description of Activity:

Snow Emergency, Support Weld County OEM, American Red Cross and CERT In shelter and search functions

Duration in hours:

29

Serving Amateur Radio Group:

D-10

Served Agencies:

Weld County OEM, CERT, American Red Cross

Describe Served Agency Participation

Weld County OEM, Management of overall emergency, provided interagency Communications.
American Red Cross, Management of Shelters, provided communications to EOC
CERT, Involvement in Search and Rescue and Shelter operations, Provided communicatons to County EOC

Number of amateurs participating:

6

Optional - List of amateurs participating

KC0DSJ
W0CDN
KB0WEB
N0EAS
KB0YDN
W0AVV

Man hours for the event (checkins*duration)

94.75

List the goals of the activity:

Support OEM, Red Cross and Cert to establish shelters, supplement communications and support search and rescue efforts

Were those goals met: (Y/N)

Y

Explain:

Established a presence in the EOC in Weld County. We coordinated with American Red Cross to support and establish shelter locations. Supported communications for CERT, who served Red Cross and later in the search efforts for a missing snow victim. All requests were fulfilled.

What went well?:

Generally the event went fine. No major operational glitches. Transportation, setup and communications went well.

Areas needing improvement:

Cold weather procedures need to be improved in terms of who is available, who has specialized equipment (i.e. 4wd), the willing without 4wd and the establisment of potential transportation options. Either repeater coverage or agreements or the building of some deployable simplex repeaters in low rf environments.

Lessons Learned:

#1 In regard to availability and methods of contact during, especially holidays, normal options are not always reliable.
#2Transportation issues in snow emergencies climb much higher on the priority list.
#3 Repeater propagation does not always remain stable during snow.

Additional Training needed:

#1 Emergency station set up, particularly antennas for snow
#2 Check-in/ check-out procedures, to be re-enforced

Comments:

We ran this on a simplex frequency with a mountain top relay. Thinking about it proactively next time we might opt to use a simplex repeater. Local repeaters that had fringe coverage to the area normally did not cover during peak need times. Commitments that are made in fair weather, will be asked to be reconsidered for snow emergencies, and potentially add another colum to choices in our online database, regarding will you respond in show emergencies.