{"id":1028,"date":"2021-02-03T08:35:11","date_gmt":"2021-02-02T22:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crest.org.au\/wordpress\/?p=1028"},"modified":"2021-02-03T08:35:11","modified_gmt":"2021-02-02T22:35:11","slug":"who-let-out-the-boats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crest.org.au\/wordpress\/?p=1028","title":{"rendered":"Who let out the boats?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cWho let out the boats\u201d was a state wide Flood Rescue Boat exercise organised by the NSW State Emergency Service for the benefit of their local units. The various local units participating practiced standard on-water activities such as vessel towing and casualty\/manikin retrieval from the water, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Loading a purpose made water manikin into B17 for the purpose of practicing casualty recovery from the water. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

CREST from Singleton participated in\nthis exercise from the viewpoint of setting up a forward command at\nLake St Clair, the location of this local exercise. Radio coverage\nacross the lake was assessed with regard to surrounding and\nintervening terrain for both SES Simplex digital PMR and CREST VHF-Hi\nband networks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The day commenced with a briefing at\nSingleton SES local Headquarters at around 0720 Hrs following the\nfinal roundup of the day\u2019s necessities such as eskies loaded with\nice and drinking water. There were six teams registered on the\nsandpit variation of the SES Computer Aided Despatch system, \u201cTrain\nBeacon\u201d. These were Flood Rescue Boats K36 RIB, B17 and B26 open\nrunabout vee hulls, N76 flat bottom punt, H10 Barra boat from\nCessnock and \u201cSingleton CREST Radio\u201d. With the formalities\ncompleted, we proceeded to Lake St Clair \u2013 around a 35km trip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now that we are all on site, the\nlocal SES Flood Rescue Boat teams went about their business of\ncarrying out a pre-launch check followed by launch straight off the\nboat ramp. Interestingly, there was a fishing tournament also being\nrun on the day. Never have we seen so many vessels on the water for\na non-long weekend\/festive season period. We went about of duty of\nsetting up the Newcastle Truck which we were using for Forward\nCommand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Radio Operator, John King logging radio traffic on both the GRN and Digital Simplex talkgroups. The green plastic toolbox has spare batteries and charger for the flood rescue boat crews. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There were three networks in\noperation for this exercise, being:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  • SES GRN mode to converse with\n\tState Operations at Wollongong;\n\t<\/li>
  • SES PMR mode for local\n\tcoverage;\n\t<\/li>
  • CREST VHF-Hi band channel for\n\tlocal coverage.\n<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    Each flood rescue boat had access to\nthe three networks. At Forward Command, we monitored the first and\nutilised the other two. For our first job for the year, it was good\nto put the vehicle through its paces. The generator, power supply\nand antenna systems, airconditioner and urn all got a thorough\nworkout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"
    This is Newcastle 05 set up ready for Forward Command Post Operation at Lake St Clair. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Lake St Clair is one of those areas\nthat is on the fringe for GRN and beyond the fringe for mobile\ncellular coverage. This means that Computer Aided Despatch Systems\nwhich rely on mobile coverage are of limited use hence particulars\nwere passed over the radio instead. Given some of the intervening\ntopography, it was surprising what digital PMR coverage was able to\nbe achieved. It was concluded at the end of the exercise at the\nAfter Action Review that the setting up of a Forward Command at this\nlocation was a worthwhile exercise and the most likely method to be\nused going forward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    \u201cWho let out the boats\u201d was a state wide Flood Rescue Boat exercise organised by the NSW State Emergency Service for the benefit of their local units. The various local […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recent-operations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crest.org.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crest.org.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crest.org.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crest.org.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crest.org.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1028"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crest.org.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1032,"href":"https:\/\/www.crest.org.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1028\/revisions\/1032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crest.org.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crest.org.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crest.org.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}