Catastrophic Communications Exercise 26

This coming weekend, including Friday October 30th and Saturday October 31st, ACS will participate in the Catastrophic Communications Exercise 26 (CCE26) which coincides with the 5th Saturday drill that would normally occur on this date. This is a nationwide exercise organized by the Washington Emergency Management Division with numerous jurisdictions participating. The focus of this exercise will be on message handling in the initial stage of a major cybersecurity incident that takes traditional power, internet and all telephones offline. There is no physical damage, so homes, antennas, and radio systems with emergency power are running at the time of the exercise. Winlink is assumed to be using the RMS relay backup at the Seattle EOC over HamWAN, which is also functioning. The exercise goal is two-fold. First, to give a broad set of amateurs practice with sending Winlink forms based messages, and second, to challenge those staffing the Seattle EOC to manage a large message flow and to triage and summarize to upstream entities such as the state EOC. 

Participation is open to any amateur in the Seattle area, and strongly encouraged for ACS members.

There will be 2 sessions for amateurs to participate in this weekend - Friday from 1300-1500, and Saturday from 1000 - 1400. ACS will staff the EOC for collection of Field Situation Reports and ICS-213 Resource Requests by Winlink. To the greatest extent possible, participants are encouraged to treat their commercial power and internet as unavailable while participating in the exercise, except for accessing exercise instructions. Take this as an opportunity to test your battery and solar options to operate off grid from home or your neighborhood. We encourage participants to send their messages to the EOC early in the scheduled sessions if possible to allow time for subsequent processing. Once your requested message traffic has been sent, you will be free to leave the exercise.

Participant instructions will be sent by email to ACS members and posted on the ACS website. They will include an ICS-205 Communications Plan and instructions on sending Winlink messages based on the Field Situation Report and Resource Request forms. A check-in and coordination net will be run on the Columbia Tower repeater to track exercise participation and resolve participant questions. Participants will use ACS Winlink gateways for their message traffic. Participants who cannot send Winlink themselves for whatever reason can work with other amateurs willing to relay. Do not use Columbia for this coordination. ACS will designate a repeater for participant collaboration, but the EOC will not participate on this channel.

We are seeking a few ACS members to staff the EOC on Friday and a few more on Saturday. We will have experienced Winlink users and leadership at both EOC sessions. If you would like to volunteer to staff the EOC on either day, please send an email to directors@seattleacs.org. Those staffing the EOC will receive additional instructions specific to the EOC role.

We look forward to strong participation from ACS members and those interested supporting this exercise.

Check back here tomorrow for participant instructions