Hams ready as typhoon strikes twice
The pow­er­ful Typhoon Bopha that killed at least 600 peo­ple and left many miss­ing in south­ern Philip­pines last week, made an unex­pect­ed U‑turn to hit the north­ern part of the archipelago.
Active dur­ing both dis­as­ters were the planned ham radio net­works, organ­ised through the nation­al IARU soci­ety, the Philip­pines Ama­teur Radio Association(PARA). When the typhoon was first seen on the weath­er radar head­ing for the south­ern island of Min­danao, PARA was host­ing its 80th birth­day cel­e­bra­tions in Mani­la. Almost imme­di­ate­ly it asked for the nets to be acti­vat­ed on VHF and for long haul traf­fic 7095 kHz, echo-link and Facebook.
What unfold­ed was an out­stand­ing effort for the ama­teur radio com­mu­ni­ty that includ­ed evac­u­a­tions of river­side and low-lying com­mu­ni­ties and coor­di­na­tion of res­cues includ­ing those at sea. The net­works played an impor­tant coor­di­na­tion role in the south with the Dis­as­ter Response Team of the Philip­pine Red Cross, Delta Fire Vol­un­teers, and the Coastguard.
Among the action was DX5RAN, the Dis­trict 5 Radio Ama­teur Net­work. That net worked with the City Gov­ern­ment of Tacloban and the City Dis­as­ter Risk Reduc­tion Man­age­ment Coun­cil. There were many oth­er radio ama­teurs involved. Res­cuers there were faced with rocks, mud­slides and rub­ble where hous­es once stood. More than 1,000 were injured and about 370,000 are in tem­po­rary shel­ter areas.
The Philip­pines is count­ing its huge eco­nom­ic loss­es in the south, includ­ing the loss of valu­able export banana plan­ta­tions at Min­danao. Human­i­tar­i­an agen­cies esti­mate 5.4 mil­lion peo­ple affect­ed by the typhoon urgent­ly need food, drink­able water and shel­ter after Bopha wiped out 90 per cent of hous­es in the worst-hit towns in Com­postela Val­ley and Davao Oriental.
In the north last week­end the typhoon did a U‑turn, and although down­grad­ed to a trop­i­cal storm hit a coun­try already hav­ing 16 severe weath­er inci­dents in the past year. The emer­gency nets of PARA were again active as heavy rains and wind came ashore at North Luzon.
The Vice Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer of PARA, Ramon J. Anquilan DU1UGZ, said both nets were now closed.
He thanked the world­wide com­mu­ni­ty for their assis­tance in coor­di­nat­ing the activ­i­ties so that the call­ing fre­quen­cy was not bur­dened by super­flu­ous transmissions.
— Jim Lin­ton VK3PC, Chair­man IARU Region 3 Dis­as­ter Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Committee.