2ndChoiceName said:
I agree, this definitely isn't a disaster on a scale of the ice storms, in fact trucks were out salting the roads yesterday and looks like we'll have power back soon. Just curious as to what protocols were in place to get in contact with reservists when regular communications were down.
I'm not sure what you're expecting here. Fanouts are a top-down organizational message passing system, where there are redundancies in case of breaks in the chain. There is no special hardware, and folks aren't that much more likely to get a broadcast tv message of "All army reserve units in 41 brigade, report to your respective armouries. Except for Mewata, you guys go to the navy reserve armoury" than a battery of e-mail, text message and phone calls.
During an emergency, people are going to get some access to either a cellphone or e-mail to check and pass emergency messages, even if they won't have continuous access. We get them there. Not everybody in the local area is going to be available to deploy, but their superiors will want feedback from them to at least look out for their welfare.
As a detachment commander, I have at least one phone number and an e-mail address for each of my det members (actually, my entire troop). During a fanout, I get contacted by someone higher. I may get told to take care of another group of people as well, whom I already have contact info for or for whom it is provided at the time. I will then contact each of my members by various means. I do not know where everybody lives or is at any given time, and we aren't all given satphones or something if that's what you were thinking.
My guys do have my contact info if they're caught in the middle of something. For the floods in southern Alberta, I made contact with one of my guys in Canmore. He was taking part in impromptu flood relief efforts there, and I made arrangements for the balance of some of his kit to get brought to him and for him to eventually link up with the rest of the unit.
For each member, I inputted their availability and any notes into a matrix on the web. If there was a problem with people's transport, we could have coordinated picking them and their kit up in a heavy truck or something, coordinating with other units.
Guys will go up the chain too. My 2IC checked in with me, and I was passing on some initial returns to higher within 5 minutes of getting contacted by my troop commander. My 2IC came in during the day prepping a CP to roll out that night, in large part of his own initiative checking in and offering to come in and help prep.
During the Manitoba floods a couple years back, the reserves "were called out" in part by already having us in the right place at the right time doing something else. There was a "multi brigade" exercise that ran in Shilo the previous week, and the rear party was still on site. They called us up, were offered terms, and we signed contacts to replace the ones that we were already on. Then we got on a bus and went elsewhere. We were met by local reservists at the Brandon armoury and by more coming in from Saskatchewan.
