The Macon-Bibb County Emergency Management Agency (EMA) spent the past week honing their Mobile Command Vehicle (MCV) and communication response skills at the annual Georgia Emergency Management & Homeland Security (GEMA/HS) Mobile Command Vehicle (MCV) Exercise.  

“This exercise really brings together communication vehicles from around the state to practice our communication skills, evaluate the functional components of our Mobile Command Vehicles,” says EMA Director Spencer Hawkins. “We get to showcase our skills while learning from other units that have been through different types of response events.”  

“The single most common problem that all disasters, exercises, or events have is communications,” says EMA Deputy Director Robert McCord. “With this exercise, we get a week to focus on improving our skills, learning new ways to overcome issues, and how to work with other agencies better should we need each other’s assistance in the future. There is no better training offered in the state than this exercise.”  

Our local team trained and practiced with teams from local, state, and federal agencies, and had a chance to build relationships with them that will help when disaster strikes. Much of the training focused on the physical communications systems and how to use them in a multiagency event but also managing complex radio and communication networks. Some examples are how to connect radios from various radio frequency bands that normally cannot communicate, planning communications plans for various operations simultaneously, and how to do field programming and repairs for network and radio systems. 

The EMA has been going to these exercises for more than 10 years. Attending this year from Macon-Bibb County are Robert McCord (EMA), Casey Walker (EMA), Richard Wolverton (Code Enforcement), Christopher Land (IT), Tracey Tharpe (EMA Volunteer), Brad Boyst (EMA Volunteer), Charlie Coyner (EMA-ARES Volunteer), and Bill Lively (EMA-ARES Volunteer).