MOULTRIE — The Southwest Georgia and North Florida Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES) will conduct a drill at Colquitt Regional Medical Center Friday, Oct. 2, through Sunday, Oct. 4. Colquitt Regional Medical Center will be the scene of the drill Saturday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Robert Grabowski, assistant district emergency coordinator for the Southwest Georgia ARES, said the premise of the test is that the electrical grid has failed statewide and will remain down from 7 p.m. Friday through 7 p.m. Sunday. The exercise will test ARES members’ ability to be self-sustaining and fully operational without any commercial power for an extended period of time. The ARES will attempt to mobilize at the county, district, state and national levels using amateur radio equipment exclusively.

The Southwest Georgia and North Florida ARES groups will simulate the additional complication of a plane crash with survivors, Grabowski said. The groups will use radio direction finding to locate a downed plane and coordinate the rescue and transport of injured passengers. No one, however, will actually be transported or treated.

Amateur radio communications will be tested in hospitals located in Cairo, Albany, Tifton and Thomasville, and Grabowski said other locations in Florida and Georgia will also take part. Communications will be conducted by voice and data exchange. Mobile antennas and radios will be set up at these hospitals to test radio communications as part of ARES emergency response efforts.

ARES conducts a large scale test like this once a year, and Grabowski said weather and hospital network tests are conducted monthly. The Southwest ARES District has close ties to the National Weather Service office in Tallahassee, Fla., and many of it members are SKYWARN certified spotters. Annual communication tests are also conducted with the National Hurricane Center in Miami.  

Grabowski said the drill scenario will be that Georgia experiences total loss of power grid Friday evening and emergency back-ups begin failing due to long outage Saturday morning. “South Georgia Airlines” Flight 1003 makes final approach to the Valdosta Airport, but back-up systems fail causing an outage of radar, telemetry, and runway lighting.

The plane overshoots, clips a tree and disappears into the darkness, and Grabowski said the Jacksonville, Fla., FAA office requests help from ARES Operators in the area of the crash, initially contacting Madison ARES, but requesting they pass the word to any Southwest Georgia group available to help.

Shortly after making contact with the Southwest Georgia ARES, Grabowski said a fiber optic failure causes Madison to lose long distance service, crippling hospital communications outside the county.

In response to all of this, Grabowski said the Madison ARES breaks into the North Florida Phone Net on 3950 kHz., requesting assistance to coordinate evacuating survivors to other hospitals outside of Madison County at 9 a.m. Saturday. The Thomas County ARES responds with activating WX4AMH at Archbold Memorial Hospital and begins alerting other stations in Georgia as the state ARES net meets in emergency session at 10 a.m. and continuing through the day every 2 hours on 3975 kHz.

The Southwest Georgia ARES deploys an RDF search team to coordinate with Madison ARES to locate the crash site by tracking the planes ELT beacon, on 147.42 MHz., Grabowski said. Once found, the search team will begin relaying triage information to the hospital net for processing.

As most local repeaters are off line, Grabowski said the Jefferson ARES activates a “superstation,” KI4JOO, for relays to WX4AMH and other hospitals activated in Georgia. Due to back-up power at the FEMA facility, the W4UCJ 147.06 repeater remains in play, but Quitman’s 146.88 MHz repeater and both Valdosta machines are off limits because they are actually in use for another real event.

Communication is of a particular interest to ARES, and any disruption to the power grid will play havoc with communications. How long will phone, cell and internet connections last in a power failure? The answer is it varies because some systems have a generator back-up but most do not.

Batteries that provide limited back-up for most home phone systems typically last for six to eight hours. These batteries used to be replaced every five years but instead are replaced every seven years to save money.

Even generators need a source of fuel. How do you refuel when you need power to run the pumps to get to the fuel? Even systems powered by natural gas require a pump to keep pressure in the line. There may be an abundance of fuel, but no way to access it during a power failure.

All this brings us back to this question of how well prepared the ARES and Colquitt County is to deal with a sustained disruption of normal electric power. ARES will find out in this weekend’s test.