35 State of Ohio, Emergency Operations Center, Room 110A, 1340 Hrs (1740Z)

State of Ohio, Emergency Operations Center, Room 110A, 1340 Hrs (1740Z)

Robert Dunlevey sat in the conference room, still trying to process what they had been informed of on the call. "Everyone," Director Thompson said loud enough to be heard. "We're going to move to Partial Activation. I want ESF 2, Communications, 5, 12, 13, and 15 staffed. Get the folks over in GIS up and running and once we do that I'll address the room." Richard leaned against the back wall of the conference room as everyone left the room. "What should I do?" he asked "Quietly notify your people..." Thompson replied, picking up a pen and a notepad from the table in front of him. "Only those that could be here in half an hour or less. If this happens and it's during rush hour or something It could take a while to get into the building. How many of your people could be self contained at home and do what you guys do?" Richard thought for a few moments. "Three or Four. Power is the problem for most of us, we just don't have the storage for the fuel that would be required for a long term outage. I have both solar and generator at home..." Of course they weren't at Richard's house. The State Emergency Operations Center was a small fortress. There were forty thousand gallons of diesel fuel in tanks stored underground out back, a generator large enough to run the whole building for as long as there was fuel, the building had enough food on hand to feed three hundred people three meals a day for a span of thirty days, and enough water for the same amount of time, plus water filtration if they had to go grab the water from the river, not to mention that there were two dedicated fiber runs in to the building for phones and Internet, and the satcom trailers. So fi the building were to lose both sets of fiber connections, they could still communicate with somewhere that had Internet. "I want to talk to the folks up at the Regional HQ in Chicago and see if we can do a test with them to make sure we can talk to them. We should be able to, and now seems like a really good time to possibly test it..." "Sounds good, if you need anything let me know." Director Thompson said. "You've got my number." It was true. Any time they were in the building to do antenna work, Richard always gave the director a heads up. It had come in handy more than once. They had already been in the building on Memorial Day, 2019 as tornadoes tore across the state. There had been no fatalities, but lots of property damage; they had also been in the building when a steam pipe burst in a vault and it had severed Internet communication litnes that fed the state wide radio system used by public service and public safety agencies. The sites didn't go completely offline, but they did stop talking to each other. Officially, the AuxComm teams were to suplement the communications infstructure, but often they had on teh ground reporting becusae they wwere spread otu enough that they could be in places that public safety wasn't. Regular civilians could blend better than uniformed folks.