Colorado ARES Section-wide Simulated Emergency Test

This year’s exercise is called Operation Dull Lightning and the scenario centers on rolling power outages. The scenario – Iranian hackers have attacked Colorado’s power grid, resulting in random power and Internet outages around the state. During these outages we need to keep communicating both using voice and data capabilities.

This year’s SET is scheduled for Saturday, October 24th beginning at 8:00 and lasting for four hours. ARES members should prepare to operate on alternative power during portions of the exercise. Also, you can count on using NVIS and Winlink during the SET. Another feature of this year’s SET is that all districts need to plan their own local SET that integrates into the statewide SET.

The local district SET needs to exercise capabilities that are needed by your served agencies. For example, if your primary served agency is a County OEM, and OEM uses your district for EOC to shelter communications, then that needs to be part of your local SET. Whatever capabilities or services your served agencies require must be included in your local exercise. Shelter comms, comm support for animal rescue, forward observers for wildland fires, comms in support of disaster assessment teams, etc. will need to be included in your local district SET.

How do these exercises integrate? When power and Internet are declared down for your region or district, commercial power cannot be used for the local exercise. The state SET will require certain activities be accomplished by each district, these activities need to be completed while the local district SET is also going on.

Does it sound like there could be a lot going on during our October 24th SET? I hope so, and it means you will have to divide and conquer to be successful. Buckle up, this one could challenge our capabilities!

More information forthcoming soon!