Heavy rains hit Chen­nai, once known as Madras, home to 4.6 mil­lion in India’s south, killed more than 320 peo­ple and left thou­sands stranded.
Ama­teur Radio Soci­ety of India Pres­i­dent, VU2GMN Gopal Mad­ha­van VU2GMN said pro­vid­ing help were radio ama­teurs with emer­gency com­mu­ni­ca­tions involved in food dis­tri­b­u­tion, han­dling numer­ous miss­ing per­son inquiries, and local sit­u­a­tion reports.
Some areas had 3 to 4 metres of water inun­dat­ing all ground floor hous­es with their own­ers los­ing everything.
Gopal VU2GMN said radio ama­teurs kept mes­sages flow­ing as oth­er com­mu­ni­ca­tion out­ages stopped phones and the Inter­net, through the lack of con­nec­tion and pow­er failure.
The Indi­an mil­i­tary res­cued thou­sands of strand­ed peo­ple, many on roof-tops, left with­out pow­er, elec­tric­i­ty or water.
Nation­al Coor­di­na­tor for Dis­as­ter Com­mu­ni­ca­tion in India, Jayu Bhide VU2JAU put out a call for more help with emer­gency communications.
In response, the num­ber of hams increased sub­stan­tial­ly, and a con­trol was set-up to coor­di­nate the efforts of all vol­un­teer organisations.
Jayu VU2JAU said even though the effort was not sub­stan­tial com­pared with the enor­mous dis­as­ter, Chen­nai HAMs were cer­tain­ly try­ing to make a dif­fer­ence in the lives of the strand­ed and homeless.
They used a local VHF repeater sys­tem to sup­port the res­cue and relief teams.
With the flood­wa­ter now gone, the Nation­al Cri­sis Man­age­ment Com­mit­tee esti­mates 90% of the city now has pow­er, bus­es are run­ning again, along with oth­er transport.
The restora­tion of the tele­phone ser­vice and the Inter­net have now been achieved with com­mu­ni­ca­tion vital for the dis­as­ter recov­ery of res­i­dents and industry.
Gopal VU2GMN said there was a hos­pi­tal alert fear­ing that after many were exposed to high­ly pol­lut­ed flood waters some may now fall ill.
He described the task of rebuild­ing the dev­as­tat­ed city to be “her­culean” and numer­ous sup­port groups had become active, espe­cial­ly deal­ing with donat­ed mate­r­i­al from all over the world.
‑Jim Lin­ton VK3PC, Chair­man IARU Region Dis­as­ter Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Committee.