In the morn­ing of April 25 an earth­quake mea­sur­ing 7.8 hit Nepal and trig­gered an avalanche on Mount Ever­est. There were fre­quent after-shocks includ­ing a mag­ni­tude of 6.7 on April 26, and on May 12 anoth­er earth­quake mea­sured 7.3 magnitude. 

 

The loss of life is var­i­ous­ly put at 8,000 peo­ple and more than 19,000 were injured. 

 

An almost imme­di­ate response to sup­port the dis­as­ter relief efforts were made by Nepalese radio ama­teurs involved with local police and mil­i­tary, for inter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tions along with two inter­na­tion­al link sta­tions 9N1AA and 9N1SP. 

 

The first inter­na­tion­al con­tact was on the 20m band between Satish 9N1AA and Jayu VU2JAU (Nation­al Coor­di­na­tor for Dis­as­ter Com­mu­ni­ca­tion in India). Satish, aware of a reg­u­lar net in India on 14.210MHz, made ini­tial con­tact, to pro­vide infor­ma­tion to the wider world and seek help. He was oper­at­ing with low pow­er from solar panels. 

 

The net grew sub­stan­tial­ly involv­ing oth­ers, and a Face­book page was set up to mon­i­tor the 20m fre­quen­cies in use. Although Nepal may appear unpre­pared, geo­physi­cists and oth­er experts had warned that Nepal was vul­ner­a­ble to a dead­ly earthquake. 

 

This was well known to emer­gency com­mu­ni­ca­tors and pre­vi­ous­ly test­ed links and rela­tion­ships were brought into play. The US-based Mil­i­tary Aux­il­iary Radio Ser­vice (MARS) has done a lit­tle pre-work test­ing links with Nepal in antic­i­pa­tion of an earth­quake. MARS report­ed on its role at the GAREC 2014 http://www.iaru.org/uploads/1/3/0/7/13073366/mars_garec_14_aug_2014.pptx

 

There was a MARS link between San­jeeb 9N1SP and Tim T6TM based in Afghanistan. This had been devel­oped and exer­cised since 2012 through the Pacif­ic Endeav­our exer­cis­es that in 2014, sim­u­lat­ed an earth­quake in Nepal. 

 

The MARS response con­cept is to get their sta­tions around the world to lis­ten for any emer­gency activ­i­ty on or around the IARU Emer­gency Cen­tre of Activ­i­ty fre­quen­cies to gath­er infor­ma­tion to sup­port the inter­na­tion­al dis­as­ter response. 

 

Fre­quent dis­as­ter reports were issued by Satish 9N1AA at Kat­man­du. There is no IARU Mem­ber Soci­ety there but he and oth­ers from the Nepal Ama­teur Radio Oper­a­tors’ Soci­ety (NAROS) were very active. 

 

The inter­na­tion­al dis­as­ter response with research and res­cue teams, and human­i­tar­i­an aid, had estab­lished com­mu­ni­ca­tions links of their own. The Ama­teur Radio nets became less use­ful as time pro­gressed, and even­tu­al­ly closed on May 17.  In clos­ing every­one who sup­port­ed the Nepal dis­as­ter through this dif­fi­cult time was thanked. 

 

It raised sig­nif­i­cant news­pa­per, radio and tele­vi­sion cov­er­age over­seas on the role Ama­teur Radio can play in emergencies. 

 

Through the IARU, engage­ment of Satish 9N1AA has been pos­si­ble, with the view of a clos­er work­ing rela­tion­ship with author­i­ties and recog­ni­tion of the role Ama­teur Radio can play. 

 

Lat­er, Satish 9N1AA chaired a meet­ing of the Nation­al Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Mon­i­tor­ing and Direc­tive Spe­cial Com­mit­tee. It looked at mak­ing rec­om­men­da­tions to the gov­ern­ment after a thor­ough assess­ment of the loss of life and prop­er­ty, res­cue and relief oper­a­tion and re-set­tle­ment fol­low­ing the disaster. 

— Jim Lin­ton VK3PC, Chair­man IARU Region 3 Dis­as­ter Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Committee.