The worst of Hur­ri­cane Irma is over, leav­ing dam­age in Florida’s Alli­ga­tor Alley, after track­ing through a string of Caribbean islands, killing at least 40 peo­ple and leav­ing more than 7.3 mil­lion with­out power.

The full sto­ry of Ama­teur Radio’s involve­ment in pro­vid­ing emer­gency com­mu­ni­ca­tions dur­ing the dis­as­ter is now start­ing to emerge.
ARRL West Cen­tral Flori­da Sec­tion Man­ag­er, Dar­rell Davis KT4WX, was thank­ful for the four hand-held trans­ceivers and one mobile trans­ceiv­er that the ARRL had sent.

He said at the Hard­ee Coun­ty Emer­gency Oper­a­tions Cen­tre the APRS data sta­tions were very impor­tant for deci­sion mak­ers to allow fire and ambu­lance crews back on the road after the worst had passed.

A repeater went off due to pow­er fail­ure, but the inge­nu­ity of radio ama­teurs lis­ten­ing to the repeater input and trans­mit­ting on the out­put main­tained com­mu­ni­ca­tions through the storm.

The SKYWARN Net was active gath­er­ing severe weath­er reports, and Florida’s Statewide Ama­teur Radio Net­work (SAR­net) was run­ning a coor­di­na­tion and assis­tance net to help com­mu­ni­cate between the Emer­gency Oper­a­tion Centres.

The Hur­ri­cane Watch Net (HWN) remained in oper­a­tion on 14.325 MHz (day) and 7.268 MHz (night). Man­ag­er Bob­by Graves KB5HAV is expect­ing it to be busy col­lect­ing post-storm dam­age reports, and han­dling health-and-wel­fare, emer­gency, and pri­or­i­ty traffic.

Through­out the Caribbean there was involve­ment by radio ama­teurs in not only Irma, but the fol­low­ing Hur­ri­canes Katia, and Jose. Pre­ced­ing them was Hur­ri­cane Harvey.

The VoIP Hur­ri­cane Net tracked both Irma and Katia, which made land­fall on the coast of south-east­ern Mexico.

The Red Cross asked for com­mu­ni­ca­tions assis­tance on Saint Maarten, with Tom Braam PJ2DD vol­un­teer­ing with a Pactor HF sta­tion and nine VHF/UHF hand­held radios. Emer­gency Sta­tions with the call­signs FG8RO and FG4NN are expect­ed to be on air.

The weath­er sys­tems smashed through Bar­bu­da on Wednes­day, the trop­i­cal par­adis­es of Saint Barts and Saint Mar­tin, the US Vir­gin Islands, Puer­to Rico, the Domini­can Repub­lic, Haiti and the Turks and Caicos.

Car­los Alber­to CO2JC of Cuba has report­ed involve­ment in the dis­as­ter. Cubans in coastal towns on the Cam­aguey arch­i­pel­ago faced a Cat­e­go­ry 5 storm uproot­ing trees and pow­er lines, and blow­ing off rooftops.

Puer­to Rico Pub­lic Infor­ma­tion Coor­di­na­tor Angel San­tana WP3GW report­ed that the storm had not left a lot of dam­age, some trees were down and while elec­tric­i­ty remained, water sup­ply was difficult.

Oth­er areas in the path of the Hur­ri­canes were expect­ed to see emer­gency com­mu­ni­ca­tions by radio ama­teurs in response to the disasters.

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