Tas­man­ian Bush­fire Disaster
WICEN Tas­ma­nia (South), assist­ed by oth­er trained south­ern region radio ama­teurs, is pro­vid­ing 24 hour sup­port for fire­fight­ing activ­i­ties as sev­er­al fires con­tin­ue to burn.
At least 100 prop­er­ties have been destroyed and thou­sands of peo­ple are left strand­ed. Towns on the dev­as­tat­ed Tas­man Penin­su­la in the state’s south-east are cut off and only acces­si­ble via sea.
WICEN Tas­ma­nia (South) Sec­re­tary, Roger Nichols VK7ARN said teams of two radio oper­a­tors for the Inci­dent Man­age­ment Team based at Tas­ma­nia Fire Ser­vice Cam­bridge, are con­cerned pri­mar­i­ly with two of the major fires. “These are fires on the Tas­man Penin­su­la and in the Der­went Val­ley. Both of these and sev­er­al oth­ers are still fast mov­ing at this time,” said Roger VK7ARN.
Sig­nif­i­cant prop­er­ty loss has already occurred, espe­cial­ly in the Tas­man Penin­su­la fire. There are 60 fire units in the field on these fires, being almost half of 130 cur­rent­ly active­ly deployed across Tas­ma­nia. He said, “Radio oper­a­tor needs and deploy­ments are under con­stant review as the sit­u­a­tion devel­ops. The Tas­ma­nia Fire Ser­vice 80MHz net­work is being used, involv­ing stan­dard pro­ce­dures and Prowords.”
Roger VK7ARN said 18 radio ama­teurs recent­ly attend­ed an intro­duc­to­ry train­ing course run by the Tas­ma­nia Fire Ser­vice in prepa­ra­tion for such an even­tu­al­i­ty, though the size and scope of the cur­rent oper­a­tions is way beyond pre­vi­ous acti­va­tions. He said radio oper­a­tor teams nor­mal­ly include at least one oper­a­tor with pre­vi­ous fire expe­ri­ence and training.
It may be that more ama­teur resources will be required, at least to assist with log keep­ing and mes­sage record­ing. These may include deploy­ments to oth­er con­trol points clos­er to the firegrounds.
Overnight a mas­sive sea res­cue oper­a­tion moved more than 1,000 peo­ple trapped by the Tas­man Penin­su­la fires to safe­ty in Hobart, 50 kilo­me­tres away. Thou­sands of peo­ple, includ­ing 700 tourists at his­toric Port Arthur, remain stranded.
— Jim Lin­ton VK3PC, Chair of the IARU Region 3, Dis­as­ter Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Committee.