Tomas through the Carribean
As Hur­ri­cane ‘Tomas’ leaves a trail of destruc­tion in its path and con­tin­ues to pose seri­ous fur­ther threats, the Ama­teur Radio sta­tion at the Nation­al Hur­ri­cane Cen­tre in Mia­mi, WX4NHC is acti­vat­ing on HF and an EchoLink/IRLP station.
The Hur­ri­cane Watch Net will be using 14.325 MHz, with sec­ondary fre­quen­cies of 7.268 MHz and 3.950 MHz ± QRM. EchoLink ‘WX-Talk’ Con­fer­ence Room and IRLP node 9219 will also be monitored.
WX4NHC will also mon­i­tor the Cit­i­zen Weath­er Observ­er Pro­gram reports and auto­mat­ed weath­er sta­tions. The vol­un­teer manned sta­tion has oper­at­ed at the Nation­al Hur­ri­cane Cen­tre for the past 30 years.
IARU Region II Area C Emer­gency Coor­di­na­tor Arnie Coro, CO2KK reports that the Cuban Ama­teur Radio Fed­er­a­tion is oper­at­ing hur­ri­cane nets in advance of Tomas on 7045 day-time and 3737 night-time.
Reports from radio ama­teurs indi­cate wide­spread dam­age to pow­er lines and homes across Bar­ba­dos and St Vin­cent, and St Lucia had been bad­ly affect­ed too.
Tomas hav­ing done its dam­age in the Wind­ward Island is now in the Caribbean Sea, with con­cerns it may reach Haiti, still recov­er­ing from a dev­as­tat­ing earth­quake that struck in January.
— Greg Mossop, G0DUB IARU Region 1 Emer­gency Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Co-Ordinator.