AREC at the ready fol­low­ing big earth­quake in New Zealand
So far AREC (Ama­teur Radio Emer­gency Com­mu­ni­ca­tions) vol­un­teers have not been required in any major way to assist, fol­low­ing the earth­quake that hit Christchurch in New Zealand.
The mag­ni­tude 7.1 earth­quake occurred at 4.36am local time Sat­ur­day 4 Sep­tem­ber, while most peo­ple were asleep in their homes.
The result was exten­sive build­ing dam­age in New Zealand’s sec­ond largest city, Christchurch, with only two peo­ple seri­ous­ly hurt and no one report­ed trapped or missing.
AREC Deputy Direc­tor, Geoff Chap­man ZL3PX who lives in Christchurch, said that while AREC was at the Civ­il Defence Head­quar­ters, there has been no require­ment for it to pass any emer­gency traffic.
That is due to restora­tion of tele­phone and pow­er to the major­i­ty of the affect­ed areas. While water and sew­er­age sys­tems have been affect­ed there has been no report­ed major loss of roads or bridges.
How­ev­er AREC is ready, as the sit­u­a­tion could wors­en with the weath­er bureau issu­ing a warn­ing of very strong winds with gusts up to 130km/h and heavy rain pos­ing new threats to already dam­aged buildings.
Adding to the dan­ger are numer­ous after­shocks with author­i­ties advis­ing that these will con­tin­ue for many days or weeks.
The ‘quake is New Zealand’s most dam­ag­ing since the one which hit Napi­er (Hawke’s Bay) in Feb­ru­ary 1931, that saw radio ama­teurs exten­sive­ly pro­vide emer­gency communications.
That led to the for­ma­tion by the IARU nation­al radio soci­ety, the New Zealand Ama­teur Radio Trans­mit­ters (NZART) of what is today known as AREC.
— IARU Region 3 Dis­as­ter Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mit­tee Chair­man, Jim Lin­ton VK3PC.