On Oct 25th, 2025, Warrick Auxcomm held a Simulated Emergency Test drill. Members, along with guests from neighboring Vanderburgh County, arrived at the Warrick EOC for a pre-drill briefing. Below is the scenario and mission presented to them.

Scenario:

A strong front moved through the area, generating a squall line that developed over southern Illinois and intensified as it moved into Indiana. Upon reaching Vanderburg County, the gust front was significant, and several tornadoes were formed. The gust front and tornadoes continued into Warrick County, creating significant damage across the county. Power is out across much of the county, and cell service is currently down in most areas. Cell service is expected to take about 48 hours or more to restore. Due to the extensive damage, power could be out for some for up to 90 days

Mission:

We have been asked to report conditions at specific parts of the county. You will be dispatched to these locations and are expected to report the conditions you see. This is a windshield assessment and not a full damage assessment, and is intended to provide EOC staff information to most effectively deploy emergency resources. The full damage assessment will come at a later time.

At 8:30teams were assigned and started moving to their vehicles. Once the teams were ready, they checked in with net control, who dispatched them to their first assigned location.

Once they released there assigned location they were looking for a pouch shown below.

Contained in the pouch is a picture, which is the scene they need to report back to net control. There could also be an inject contained within the pouch.

The pictures were both of what would be expected scenes as well as pictures that were silly. The silly pictures were meant to offer a challenge for describing them as well as adding a little fun to the exercise. Teams were allowed to use any mode they desired to get the information back to net control.

We were testing on a number of things we trained on this year, including digital modes and transmitter hunting. One of the dispatches was for an “aircraft down” with a beacon on a given frequency. We were able to take this opportunity to add a little fun to the exercise. When the team found the transmitter, they found the scene shown below. Along with the scene, they found an inject in the pouch to be sent 5 minutes after reporting the scene. The inject was ” Flying monkeys have arrived and resuscitated the witch. The monkeys stated that because she didn’t land in water, she would be fine.” Both the report of the witch and the inject got a chuckle out of everyone.

Although not everything went exactly as planned or hoped, no good exercise ever does, we are very pleased with the results. Descriptions were sent verbally as well as through Winlink. We had some issues with SSTV, but we believe we may have identified the cause after analysis. Logging was done appropriately, descriptions contained appropriate detail, and priority injects were handled with the proper urgency. We also received some positive feedback from the participants during the post-exercise hotwash. We will be going over the exercise in greater detail during the November Auxcomm meeting.