Near Southwest Preparedness Alliance
Emergency Communication Exercise
The upcoming exercise will be held on Saturday, May 7, 2022. This training event will begin at 8:00 AM EDT.
This hospital drill will be an exercise to assist in facilitating the simulation of the transport of patients from outside the Roanoke Virginia area into Roanoke. No patients will actually be moved but the coordination for this action will be facilitated by the use of Winlink using Winlink Express. This messaging may be sent using either VHF or HF RMS gateways. A listing of Winlink addresses and assigned hospitals will be posted on a page prior to the date of the exercise.
The registration form for this month has an addition. This addition is "Relay". It is the call of the station that will receive the traffic from each hospital region. This includes "East" which is the east-coast. "Near" which is near southwest Virginia and "Far" which is far southwest Virginia. Headquarters is where the request for assistance is sent by those east and west of the area around Roanoke. This is abbreviated, "HQ". The relay stations would receive all request for Bed space required in their regions and would combine these requirements in messages forwarded to HQ. This would reduce the volume of messages that HQ would need to handle. HQ would reply back to the relay stations rather than individual hospitals.
Here is an example; Message body, We require 8 beds for auto accident injuries from 104 auto cashes on I-77 due to fog. Twin County Hospital.
Message body, We need to transfer 11 patients from a multi-vehicle crash of I-77 near Fancy Gap, assorted injuries.
Withe County Hospital.
Message Body, We need to transfer 16 patients from our ER that were injured in a multi-vehicle pileup on I-77.
Smyth County Hospital.
The combined message sent to HQ might read,
We need to transfer 43 patients from our district to the Roanoke area. These are all an assortment of injuries from a massive multi-vehicle accident on Fancy Gap Mountain on I-77.
When the answer is received from HQ to the reply staions, the relay station would direct each hospital where to send their patients.
Relay stations should have two or more people to help with their heavy volume of traffic. HQ would also need 2 or more people to handle their heavy volume of traffic. Non-hams could handle typing task and hand these off to Winlink operators via a thumb drive or other digital means.
We only have a week to prepare so register as soon as possible. The exercise will begin on Saturday, April 7th at 0800 local time. The link to the registration page is http://www.w4ghs.org/hospital-registration.html. To view the hams participating, click here. The current listing of hams is from last month. As new registrations come in, this listing will change.
If you are new, you may operate from home and simulate messages from an assigned hospital. If you need the name of a hospital, send an email to me from "Far", for the Roanoke and New River Valley send an email to "Near" and if you are from the east coast send an email to "East".
Be sure to include a line in each message, "THIS IS A DRILL, THIS IS A TEST"
If you have questions contact me at Glen Sage, N4DN at 276-398-3548.
