Recent Command Post Deployments

I was Incident Command at our local "Ham and Turkey Festival" this past weekend. Luckily only a few minor incidents. We had our EMA command post set up and had multiple Law, multiple Fire, EMS and 911 in the structure. Good activity for all involved. I won't say exercise or training, because it was the real deal. We had real issues with the real people responding. As part of it, we were testing all features of the new command post and working with a prototype CAD software I'm developing. Numerous tours were given and feedback was gathered for review. 153 hours were logged for the event. Last night we had our first rapid deployment. We hadn't fully rehab'ed from the weekends activity, but we had worked out some kinks Saturday at the Ham and Turkey Festival. We responded with the Command Post to an overturned propane tanker. Ironically? while enroute, another ham from the neighboring county gave us a holler on our local UHF repeater to ask about our status. He was out with the HazMat Comm team from that area, which serves a wide area including our county. Luckily we didn't need that resource. It was estimated that 80 gallons of diesel and 8900 gallons of propane were onboard the truck. We set up on the road blocked highway in the cold zone. The incident commander took up residence at the command post and we established communications with the Law, Fire and EMS units on scene via mutual aid channels. The central dispatch center was able to clearly copy our traffic on one of the mutual aid frequencies. This freed up two of the county wide repeaters for other use. (Did I mention we also had another active incident in the same area a result of an earlier tornado warning?) We had numerous entities involved and multiple locations. Approximately 70 hours were logged during the time the command post was on scene. It was a somewhat extended deployment but overall very successful and rewarding.