Write the Communications List Before the Emergency: Lessons from the FEMA ICS-205A
The step most drills skip
Emergency communications rarely fail because equipment breaks. Far more often, on the day, nobody can say which frequency to use, which repeater is open, or who exactly to call.
Two exercises this autumn — one on each side of the Pacific — started from the same small task: writing down in advance who you can reach.
The U.S. side: seven days of repeater inventory
The ARRL Maryland-DC Section’s 2026 section-level Simulated Emergency Test (SET) ran from October 3 across seven days. The assignment was deliberately plain: each participant monitors the VHF, UHF and 6 m repeaters reachable from their home station and records the results on a FEMA ICS-205A — Communications List form.
The form asks for the basics: name, amateur call sign, and six-digit Maidenhead grid locator, together with the parameters of each repeater. Submissions close on October 18. The collected sheets roll up into a section-wide inventory of communications resources, handed to county Emergency Coordinators (ECs) and the ARES organization for use. In other words, an amateur-scale exercise produces a base map that officials will actually use.
The Delaware Section’s arrangement shows the layering even better. Their SET ran in the week of October 19 to 24, with October 24 as the formal day, in four parts: two simplex tests on 146.550 MHz (2 m), a simulated networked repeater system test using System Fusion, a Winlink digital communications test, and an HF check-in on the Delaware traffic net at 3.905 MHz.
The China side: enterprises drilling the same skill
On September 29, the Qingdao West Coast New Area held a mountain radio direction finding challenge in the Dazhu Mountain area, themed around coastal defense and teamwork. Thirty-five enterprise employees took part in teams, organized with the district’s defense education office, the district marine development bureau, and the Huangdao District Amateur Radio Association.
The format was practical: five themed points along a route, a 100-minute time limit, and teams navigating by direction-finding receiver, map and compass to hidden transmitters, completing coastal-defense quizzes, emergency message relay drills, team tasks and Morse code decoding at each point, with a final oath ceremony at the finish. Scoring combined find accuracy, task completion and total time. Before the race, coaches from the Huangdao association trained all participants on direction-finding principles, equipment handling, Morse basics and outdoor safety rules. Afterwards, the organizers planned to consolidate lessons and a skills inventory, and to build an enterprise emergency volunteer service team on the multi-party platform the event created.
What the form actually asks
The value of a form like ICS-205A is not the format. It forces you to answer questions you would not otherwise ask yourself:
- From my location, which repeaters actually open, and which are only theoretical coverage?
- For each repeater: offset, CTCSS tone, coverage and approximate distance?
- When the primary frequency dies, what is the backup?
- When something happens, who do I coordinate with, and how does my message get out?
For the record, the official FEMA ICS-205A (current version v3) is a Communications List: it records the incident name and operational period, then the basic local communications information — incident assigned position, name, and method(s) of contact (phone, pager, cell, radio frequency and so on) — and finally who prepared it. Its companion, the ICS-205 Incident Radio Communications Plan, carries the radio frequency assignments down to Division/Group level; the 205A is the directory of people and contact methods, an optional part of the Incident Action Plan, filled in during check-in and updated each operational period.
Half an hour with paper beats rediscovering all of this on the day of an earthquake.
Five steps you can copy
- List what is reachable. From your own station, record every repeater and simplex channel you can open — frequency, offset, tone, nothing skipped.
- Write it as one sheet. Using ICS-205A-style fields (who, frequency, mode, time period, backup), compress it to a single page. Keep one paper copy and one electronic copy.
- Test each entry for real. Writing it down does not count. Pick a time window, actually key up each one, make a contact, and note signal quality and the hours it works.
- Hand it to someone who can use it. Give the sheet to your local emergency coordinator or association, so individual lists can be assembled into a regional resource map.
- Keep the failures as a to-do list. This step has the highest yield — the frequencies that did not open are the real problems to solve.
The point
A drill is not for proving you can make contact. It is for finding out in advance which contacts you cannot make. One small exercise that leaves behind a solid list is worth more than a big event that leaves nothing behind.
References
- FEMA, ICS Resource Center — ICS Forms — ICS Form 205A, Communications List (v3) and ICS Form 205, Incident Radio Communications Plan (v3.1)
- ARRL Maryland-DC Section, MDC Section Simulated Emergency Test 2026 — repeater inventory task and ICS-205A submission requirements (October 2026)
- ARRL Delaware Section Manager Newsletter, October 2026 issue — SET week schedule and test items
- Lightning News / Toutiao, “Celebrating the National Day, Practicing Skills — Qingdao West Coast Holds Mountain Radio Direction Finding Challenge” (October 1, 2026)