Lee County ARES participates in District Wide Simulated Emergency Test

Lee Co ARES participated in a District 7 ARES Simulated Emergency Exercise.  District 7 includes the counties of Lee, Bastrop, Hays, Caldwell, Fayette, Milam, Travis, and Williamson, a first in the recent history of the District.

Three members of LCARES activated the WD5LEE amateur radio station at the Lee County EOC at the Sheriff’s Office.  Other members operated from their home stations, and two members operated from mobile vehicles.  We made contacts with operators in adjoining counties, using local repeaters, simplex frequencies, and HF frequencies. Our mobile EMCOMM trailer was deployed near Blue, TX.

We established contacts with the Milam, Travis, Hays, and Williamson County EOC’s, and sent  our status reports to the District 7 EC via Winlink (email via radio). Overall, we made contacts with stations in 17 locations within the District.  We also posted messages to the Nationwide Traffic Net, and made contact with the National Weather Service. The exercise was successful and highlighted improvements needed in each county to be more resilient in case of emergency and disaster.