No rest for the busy HERO (Ham Emer­gency Radio Oper­a­tions) net­work which has again acti­vat­ed for the storm Jang­mi (Seni­ang) that made land­fall in Min­danao Island on Decem­ber 29 and crossed cen­tral areas caus­ing mas­sive floods and landslides. 

At least 53 peo­ple had been killed and 121,700 affect­ed by the bad weath­er sys­tem. This stor­m’s death toll was near­ly triple the deaths of Super Typhoon Hagupit in ear­ly December. 

Thel­ma Pas­cua DU1IVT, the Philip­pines Ama­teur Radio Soci­ety Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer, says: “With suc­ces­sive typhoons bring­ing rains, the soil got so sat­u­rat­ed it caused landslides. 

“Region­al HERO was in place in Min­danao and Visayas. It’s now auto­mat­ic for a lot of hams to coor­di­nate with their local dis­as­ter risk reduc­tion and management.” 

Reports of HERO activ­i­ty came from the affect­ed areas with more than 80,000 tak­ing shel­ter in evac­u­a­tion centres. 

Among them is Cat­balo­gan town in Samar province, where 19 peo­ple died in a land­slide that left homes and vehi­cles buried under rocks and mud. 

Thel­ma says: “Mem­bers from the East­ern Visayas area are embed­ded in the Office of Civ­il Defense and the Risk Reduc­tion and Man­age­ment Council. 

“East­ern Min­danao hams also have good coor­di­na­tion with Local Gov­ern­ment and the Nation­al Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion. They were acti­vat­ed two days before the landfall.” 

She said reg­u­lar train­ing out­side the affect­ed areas is now start­ing on emer­gency mes­sage han­dling while the reg­u­lar net con­trol sta­tions step aside, in prepa­ra­tion for future emer­gen­cies hit­ting Metro Manila. 

Thel­ma DU1IVT says PARA mem­bers have more aware­ness now on the fre­quen­cies used for such sit­u­a­tions. They mon­i­tor our 40m work­ing fre­quen­cy and par­tic­i­pate with check-ins for the 7am and 7pm dai­ly nets. 

— Jim Lin­ton VK3PC, Chair­man IARU Region 3 Dis­as­ter Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Committee.