Statewide Tornado Drill Set for Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

Savannah, GA – February 2, 2009, 2:30 PM
Chatham Emergency Management Agency News Release

The Chatham Emergency Management Agency (CEMA), in conjunction with the Georgia Emergency Management Agency (GEMA) and the National Weather Service (NWS), encourages Georgians to join them in observing the week of February 1-7 as Severe Weather Awareness Week.

“The main event of the annual week-long campaign is the Statewide Tornado Drill, scheduled for the morning of Wednesday, February 4,” said CEMA Director Clayton Scott. “The NWS will issue a test weather warning message to initiate the drill. Local warning systems, NOAA All-Hazard Weather Radio, and the Emergency Alert System (EAS) will be activated upon receipt of this warning message, to signal the start of the drill.”

Residents should treat the drill as if it were an actual severe weather emergency. The purpose of the annual drill is to test everyone’s readiness for life-threatening severe weather events such as tornadoes and severe thunderstorms.

Director Scott urges families, schools, businesses, government agencies and other institutions to participate in the drill and to use Severe Weather Awareness Week as their catalyst into preparing for the 2009 severe weather season. In the event of bad weather on February 4, the Statewide Tornado Drill will be rescheduled for Friday, February 6. Schools not in session February 4 may conduct their severe weather drill on another Wednesday when the NWS initiates its weekly NOAA All-Hazard Weather Radio test.

For more information, contact CEMA at (912) 201-4500 or visit these Web sites: www.ChathamEmergency.org, www.gema.ga.gov, www.srh.noaa.gov/ffc/ or www.ready.ga.gov.

Chatham County ARES Tornado Drill

Georgia ARES will be having a statewide tornado drill this week on Wed, Feb 4th at 9:00am. Net Control will begin taking checkins at 9:00am on 3.975Mhz. All are encouraged to check in.

In conjunction with this statewide drill, we will be having a local 2 meter net on our primary ARES frequency of 146.970. This net will begin at 8:00am. I'll be the Net Control Operator and KF4LMT will be the backup. This net will be our local "resource net" and everyone will check into this net and provide some information about location, capabilities, availability, etc. Based on this info I may move you over to a local "tactical net". We will have a tactical net operating on the 147.330 repeater. This net will primarily provide support for portables and mobiles. Mac, KF4LMT, will be the net control operator. We will exercise several methods of comm between the two net control stations including Echolink, UHF Repeater, and 2 meter simplex. We plan to run some scenarios simulating losing Internet connectivity, losing commercial power, and losing certain repeaters.

I'd welcome any of you that can participate to do so, even if it's only to check in and out. If you can be available to "deploy" to certain locations around town mobile or portable let me know. That will help the scenario as well.

Guy McDonald, K4GTM
ARES Emergency Coordinator
Chatham County GA
www.k4gtm.blogspot.com/