The Mal­ta Ama­teur Radio League (MARL) have com­plet­ed their involve­ment in a Euro­pean Union sup­port­ed Earth­quake sim­u­la­tion exercise.
Around 300 par­tic­i­pants sim­u­lat­ed the sce­nario in which Mal­ta was hit by a 7.6 mag­ni­tude earth­quake in the cen­tral Mediter­ranean area 120km south west of the island. Because of the size of the sim­u­lat­ed event the Mal­ta Civ­il Pro­tec­tion Depart­ment were assist­ed by the Pres­i­den­za del­la Regione Sicil­iana-Depar­ti­men­to del­la Pro­tezione Civile in Italy.
The Exer­cise began at 1700 local time on Sep­tem­ber 3, and con­tin­ued on until 5th Sep­tem­ber 5. As part of the sup­port pro­vid­ed by Ama­teur Radio to the exer­cise, around 220 mes­sages were passed on behalf of the emer­gency services.
The radio ama­teurs also pro­vid­ed mobile radio back­up in areas not served by PMR repeaters and an Ama­teur Tele­vi­sion stream from the exer­cise site to the base of operation.
To demon­strate all the tools avail­able to Ama­teur Radio they also used dig­i­tal modes to pass text files, pho­tos and oth­er images between loca­tions and also assist­ed with set­ting up of net­works and oth­er IT and tech­ni­cal support.
This exer­cise pro­vid­ed a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for them to show what they can do in a dis­as­ter in Europe, rais­ing aware­ness with the author­i­ties and high­light­ing that dis­as­ters can occur anywhere.
— Greg Mossop G0DUB, IARU Region 1 Emer­gency Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Co-ordinator