03/17/2016
ARES teams from five Florida counties took part in a February 24 exercise at
the St Lucie Nuclear Power Plant on Hutchinson Island in Jensen Beach. The
plant is required to hold a exercise every 2 years to test and evaluate the
responses of plant personnel, law enforcement, emergency managers, and
communication personnel in the event of an emergency, such as a radiation
release. The exercises are evaluated by personnel from the Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA) and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The 2016
scenario involved overloaded and unusable public telecommunication systems. In
a real emergency, ARES volunteers would provide radio communication among the
county emergency operations centers and other critical entities and locations.
ARES teams participated from St Lucie, Palm Beach, Martin, Indian River, and
Brevard counties. Operators successfully employed the linked UHF repeater-based
Statewide Amateur Radio Network[1] (SARnet) for most communication, as well as
an HF net on 7.245 MHz. The dual nets provided for redundancy and reliability
for the ARES mission to support the EOCs. SARnet serves the State of Florida;
it's interconnected by a Florida Department of Transportation network.
All ARES communication tests and requirements were successfully passed and met,
and evaluators praised the use of dual nets for enhanced reliability. Martin
County ARES also had a display of Go-Kits. A FEMA representative visited with
ARES EC Steve Marshall, WW4RX, who discussed the kits and answered questions
about SARnet and its coverage. - Thanks to the ARRL ARES E-Letter[2]
[1] http://www.sarnetfl.com/home
[2] http://www.arrl.org/ares-el
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