Mes­sages from Mem­ber Societies

 

From: “Chan­dru” [ARSI — India]
To: ‘Kei­go Komuro, JA1KAB’ 
Sent: Tues­day, Jan­u­ary 04, 2005 9:51 PM 
Sub­ject: RE: Ama­teur Radio Dis­as­ter Relief — News Article 

The destruc­tion and the hav­oc caused by the tsuna­mi in the coun­tries around Bay of Ben­gal is already known to the world. 

The Ama­teure Radio Oper­a­tors con­tri­bu­tion to the dis­as­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion has been of great help and appre­ci­at­ed by all. 

The very first per­son to take up dis­as­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion from Andaman was Bharathi vu2rbi and her couleges who had gone their for a DX Expe­di­tion. On hear­ing about the dis­as­ter many more ama­teur radio oper­a­tors trav­eled to Andaman and some of them were deployed in Car Nico­bar and oth­er Islands. 

Many ama­teur radio oper­a­tors also went to Coastal regions of India and to assist in dis­as­ter communication. 

The efforts of the ama­teur radio oper­a­tors in the field was backed up by real­is­ta­tions on the main land main­ly from Ban­ga­lore, Hydrabad, Kalkut­ta and oth­er centers. 

This com­bined effort from ama­teur radio oper­a­tors has been appre­ci­at­ed by all par­tic­u­lar­ly the Gov­ern­ment of India and NGO’s oper­at­ing in dis­as­ter areas. In fact the Gov­ern­ment has issued a blan­ket per­mis­sion for ama­teur radio oper­a­tors to car­ry their equip­ments and oper­ate in dis­as­ter affect­ed areas. 

The com­mu­ni­ty of ama­teur radio oper­a­tors in India are unit­ed in their efforts as nev­er before. The inter­club (Soci­eties Asso­ci­a­tion) rival­ries has been for­got­ten and all are work­ing towards help­ing in estab­lish­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion. This is some­thing very good for the ama­teur radio oper­a­tors com­mu­ni­ty in India. 

I have received many mes­sages from ama­teur radio clubs in oth­er coun­tries offer­ing assis­tance and help I will be writ­ing to them indi­vid­u­al­ly. In the mean­time I take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to thank all of them. 

I will be able to send a more detail account after some of the oper­a­tors return from the dis­as­ter area. 

73’s 
Chandru 

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From: “Kusal Epa” [RSSL Sri — Lanka]
To: IARU Region 3 
Sent: Wednes­day, Decem­ber 29, 2004 11:27 PM 
Sub­ject: From RSSL — Tsuna­mi Dis­as­ter Relief Net 

Hi, 

This is to inform you that The Radio Soci­ety of Sri Lan­ka (RSSL) has deployed it’s mem­bers to oper­ate a dis­as­ter relief com­mu­ni­ca­tions net­work as nor­mal com­mu­ni­ca­tions links have been cut off due to the dis­as­ter caused by tidal waves. 
Our net­work oper­ates on VHF through a local repeater and on HF on 7.060 MHz (most­ly dur­ing day­time on HF). 

73! 

Kusal Epa — 4S7KE 
Sec­re­tary — RSSL 

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From: “Tony Waltham” [RAST — Thailand]
To: IARU Region 3 Mem­ber Societies
Sent: Wednes­day, Decem­ber 29, 2004 12:37 AM 
Sub­ject: Radio Ama­teur Soci­ety of Thai­land seeks your help 

Dear OM, 

On behalf of the Radio Ama­teur Soci­ety of Thai­land I would like to seek your soci­ety’s assis­tance in help­ing dev­as­tat­ed Thai coastal com­mu­ni­ties, if you or your mem­bers are able to do this. 

You have prob­a­bly heard that the west­ern coast of south­ern Thai­land was dev­as­tat­ed by a tsuna­mi (tidal wave) on the morn­ing of Sun­day, Decem­ber 26, 2004. 

As res­cue efforts con­tin­ue (at the time of writ­ing on the evening of Tues­day, Dec 28), the death toll exceeds 1,000 and is like­ly to rise to over 2,000 as more bod­ies are being recov­ered from remote areas and islands. In addi­tion, over 7,500 Thais and for­eign tourists are now receiv­ing med­ical attention. 

The Thai gov­ern­ment has appealed for dona­tions to assist peo­ple in the dev­as­tat­ed areas while RAST under­stands that as far as Thai­land’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions needs are con­cerned, the sit­u­a­tion is now under con­trol. Thai hams are help­ing to relay infor­ma­tion between the affect­ed areas along the west coast in the South to gov­ern­ment agen­cies, most­ly on VHF and 40 metres, as well as dis­sem­i­nat­ing news and infor­ma­tion over VHF fre­quen­cies in Bangkok. 

Echolink, too, has played a role in enabling radio ama­teurs here to relay infor­ma­tion to con­cerned friends and rel­a­tives of those hol­i­day­ing in the affect­ed areas. 

In assess­ing what our soci­ety might be able to do in the wake of this dis­as­ter and in how best to respond to gen­er­ous offers of assis­tance and sup­port made by ham friends around the world we believe that what is now need­ed the most is help for the many thou­sands of peo­ple made home­less by the tsunami. 

RAST would like to announce that we are now accept­ing dona­tions and that we will pass on all finan­cial sup­port received to the Thai Gov­ern­ment which has opened a chan­nel for this. 

We will be giv­ing full cred­it to all con­tri­bu­tions from the inter­na­tion­al ama­teur radio com­mu­ni­ty as well as to indi­vid­ual donors and donor organ­i­sa­tions that help us in this time of dire need and we hope that this pub­lic­i­ty will help by pro­mot­ing aware­ness both at home and abroad of the resources and good­will that our hob­by can mobilise. 

The best way for any­one to trans­fer funds to RAST for this pur­pose would be by wire trans­fer to a RAST bank account at the 
Siam City Bank: 
Ratchawat Branch No 111 
SWIFT Code: SITYTHBK 
Account Type: Savings 
Account Num­ber: 111–2‑22688–4 
Account Name: RAST 
(Full name: Radio Ama­teur Soci­ety of Thailand) 

We also ask that all donors send details of their sup­port to dx@thai.com by email or, alter­na­tive­ly, by Fax to +662–321-6443 for our records and also that we can acknowl­edge the dona­tion or pledge and so that we can give full cred­it and recog­ni­tion to their gen­eros­i­ty in our time of need. 

Please help Thai­land to help the vic­tims of this nat­ur­al dis­as­ter in any that way you can. We encour­age you to pass this appeal along to any oth­ers who you feel may be able to help. 

Thank you, 
73 and 88 
Mayuree Chotikul, HS1YL, President 
Radio Ama­teur Soci­ety of Thailand 
under the Roy­al Patron­age of His Majesty the King 

(Mes­sage sent by Tony Waltham, HS0ZDX, RAST Vice Pres­i­dent and 
Inter­na­tion­al Liai­son Officer)
Tony Waltham 

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From: “Musa Suraat­mad­ja” [ORARI — Indonesia]
To: “IARU Region 3” 
Cc: “ORARI Pusat”, “YB0PHM” 
Sent: Tues­day, Decem­ber 28, 2004 4:51 PM 
Sub­ject: Re: A Mes­sage of Sympathy 

Dear Colleagues, 

Thank you for your mes­sage of sym­pa­thy. Our ORARI mem­bers are amongst the vol­un­teers to go to the strick­en areas, doing emer­gency com­mu­ni­ca­tion, res­cue oper­a­tions and oth­er things. 

Thanks again. 

de Musa-YB0MOS 

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From: “G.Victor A .Goonetilleke” [RSSL — Sri Lanka]
To: “IARU Region 3”, “ARSI: Ram­chan­dra VU2RCR”, “MARTS: Admin” 
“ORARI: Musa Suraat­mad­ja, YB0MOS”, “RAST: Tony Waltham, HS0ZDX” 
“SARTS: Jothinathan, 9V1JN” 
Cc: “Chan­dru, VU2RCR”, “K.C. Sel­vadu­rai, 9V1UV”, “Peter Naish, VK2BPN”
“Yoshi­ji Seki­do, JJ1OEY”, “Young-Soon Park, HL1IFM” 
Sent: Mon­day, Decem­ber 27, 2004 3:11 PM 
Sub­ject: Re: A Mes­sage of Sympathy 

Great to hear from you. Will respond soon.
All of us are ok here. Try­ing hard to orga­nize some emmer­gency com­mu­ni­ca­tions and also doing some food destri­b­u­tions and things like that. Snce the affect­ed areas are so wide­spread things are very hard. Every­one with­in 1000 metres or so of the coast have been bad­ly affect­ed right along the coast from North to South on the east­ern side of the island. In some areas as fari as 2–3kms. On the West­ern side not so bad, about 100 metres from the coast.as the quake was on the East­ern side of the island and the tidal waves came from the East/ S.East. You would have seen the vast destruction..frightening..

regards 
Victor