Meeting
The team met in Columbus at Franklin County EMA on November 20th to conduct an after-action debriefing regarding our recent deployment to
Unloading
Asheville and Buncombe County, North Carolina. Committee Chair Nick DiCicco lead a discussion on the good, bad, and ugly, from first standby alert to the return of the last resource in October. This was a significant deployment for our taskforce; nearly double the manpower was required for this activation compared to Lee County or the US Virgin Islands deployments. A majority of the team was able to attend, including Noah Ash. We acknowledged the things that went well, and also spoke openly of the areas that could stand improvement. While we are incredibly proud of what our team was able to accomplish, there is always space to improve. And, a lot of that improvement derives from experience. Going into this deployment, information was difficult to come by, and was sometimes contradictory. Plainly, we didn’t know what we didn’t know. So, a chance to improve on that area for next time. Having personnel from Ohio MARCS along was also identified as a specific area of pride, and both of those members were noted for their work in restoring badly needed communications in the area.
One of the other areas we discussed was establishing regional TERT teams around the state. The purpose is twofold: firstly, to try to more equally balance out the team membership composition across the state, and secondly, to enable these teams to cover regional intrastate events, such as LODD events, or acute emergencies in a specific jurisdiction. The regions would align to the current Ohio Homeland Security regions, and each would have a coordinator that would be the designated team contact for their part of the state.
After lunch, the team went to the Columbus Department of Public Safety logistics warehouse to offload the tent loaned to us by Franklin County EMA. We inflated the tent inside one of the apparatus washing bays, and scrubbed, wiped, and washed this monster up and down. We left it inflated with a large fan running to dry it overnight, and a second crew returned Wednesday after the Ohio APCO/NENA meeting to collapse it, dry it off, and reload the tent back aboard the EMA trailer at the logistics warehouse. We again acknowledge and express thanks to Franklin County EMA for the use of the tent, and to Columbus Fire for allowing the use of the wash bay.