What to do during a MARS exercise
Sending Essential Elements of Information (EEI) messages is a critical part of the MARS mission and most of our ECOM drills are set up as situations that would, in real life, generate a large number of these messages to be sent through the system.
But in a drill this does not happen by itself; there are not a designated few stations who make up the EEI messages. During a MARS exercise all member stations are expected to originate Exercise EEI messages and to forward them, depending on where they are located.
Stations within the simulated disaster zone
During a MARS exercise stations within the area affected by the simulated disaster (blizzard, earthquake, hurricane, etc.) are expected to originate EEI messages describing conditions in their locality in a way that fits into the overall scenario. This is an opportunity to use your imagination. Remember that EEI messages are not sent to describe normal situations, so you need to make something up, within the spirit of the exercise. See the sample EEI message to see what one might look like. The sample has something in every paragraph in order to demonstrate the kind of information expected there, but the messages you write during a drill do not have to be that long.
Use knowledge of your local area to add realistic details. For example, if there is a stretch along a road near you that often is blocked by high water or ice from an adjacent river, and the exercise involves bad weather, you might use that as a basis for a "TALL WATER" EEI message. If that river has a difficult name like "Piscataquog" then all the better so we can practice our phonetic spelling.
There are three important differences in how you send an EEI message during an exercise compared to an actual event:
1. The SUBJ line of the message will contain the words "MARS EXERCISE" and the name of the exercise instead of "ACTUAL EVENT/EEI". For example, "MARS EXERCISE GRECIAN FIREBOLT"
2. The message will be sent by radio rather than by email. DOMS wants to receive actual EEI messages by email, and in a real situation we would use MARS radio circuits only to get an EEI message out of an area experiencing a communications problem. But since the purpose of the exercise is to practice handling messages, we behave as though the internet was not working and always send the EEI messages over radio circuits.
3. The exercise messages are never sent to DOMS. Instead, the announcement of the exercise will identify some other station which is to receive the messages, in addition to the national emergency coordinator, AFN1EC. This also means you should not send exercise messages to the special BBS addresses that automatically forward to DOMS.
Stations outside the simulated disaster zone
During a MARS exercise, stations outside of the area of the presumed disaster will not be generating EEI messages. But they are expected to help forward these messages to the stand-in station for DOMS, and there are other types of messages that can come from outside the area.
1. If the disaster area is in a different USAF MARS region than the DOMS stand-in, much of this forwarding activity will be on the TRANSCON and long-distance digital circuits. If you have not checked into TRANSCON before, this is an excellent chance to try that net. Don't worry - the procedures are the same as on the region nets but the propagation is quite different.
In fact, the vagaries of propagation means that there may be times when stations located in MARS regions that are not covered by the disaster itself, and not the home of the DOMS stand-in, may be in the best location to help forward a message. For example, a station in Oklahoma (region 4) might be in a good position to relay a message between a Florida "hurricane" area (region 2) and AFN1EC (region 1). In radio, sometimes longer distances are easier than short ones. So if you are in a region that would appear not to have anything to contribute in an exercise, listen in on the TRANSCON frequencies, both voice and digital.
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2 In an actual emergency areas outside the disaster area may be called upon to render material aid (food, portable shelter, etc.) and somebody has to announce the availability of such aid. This can be you, acting in the role of some official. Remember that the real emergency aid officials do not participate in the MARS exercises, so MARS members have to generate the messages the officials would have sent.
Whether originating exercise EEI messages or acting in the role of an emergency aid official during an exercise, you do not need to ask permission before doing so. And you do not have to wait for someone to tell you to do it. If you have an idea for a message that would fit into the spirit of the exercise, go ahead and send it. (Just make sure it is marked "MARS EXERCISE".)