High Praise for Radio Club de Chile (RCCH)
The fol­low­ing is a trans­la­tion of a Span­ish lan­guage TV report on the ama­teur radio response in Chile.
As parts of earth­quake-hit Chile again this week were shak­en by severe after­shocks there has been fur­ther news of the role of radio ama­teurs, includ­ing them being a high­ly sought after reli­able source of information.
A tele­vi­sion news report describes them as a col­lec­tion of ded­i­cat­ed ham radio oper­a­tors scat­tered across the coun­try, prov­ing to be an infor­ma­tion life­line dur­ing the recent dev­as­tat­ing earth­quake, tsuna­mi and its aftermath.
Inter­viewed was RCCH Sec­re­tary Ale­jan­dro Jara CE3JWF and Direc­tor of SER (Ser­vi­cio de Emer­gen­cia de Radioafi­ciona­dos) Rafael Riesco CE3FFR, the Span­ish lan­guage report, trans­lat­ed to Eng­lish said “They were on air with­in 10 to 15 min­utes of the quake – where possible.”
“While tele­phones and the inter­net large­ly failed, many of the radio oper­a­tors have back-up pow­er and were able to pro­vide vital lines of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, picked up by Nation­al Radio Chile and rebroad­cast, giv­ing sta­tus of var­i­ous affect­ed areas.”
The report added that, “Even where inter­net still worked, gos­sip social net­work­ing pages could not be trust­ed, exag­ger­at­ing and get­ting things wrong.”
“Ham radio oper­a­tors of the Radio Club of Chile are more hon­ourable, ded­i­cat­ing many hours of their lives to their radio net­works and broad­cast­ing, in some cas­es, from dam­aged equip­ment, even after the col­lapse of anten­nas. Thanks to them – Save Chile in a crisis!”
“The ham oper­a­tor call­sign enabled nation­al radio and author­i­ties to trust the infor­ma­tion as mem­bers of the club have ‘hon­or­able’ sta­tus, a great asset in a cri­sis where mes­sages can get dis­tort­ed through nor­mal com­mu­ni­ci­a­tion chan­nels, if available.”
The report went fur­ther to say “Claims that ham radio is dying were put to rest as these oper­a­tors pro­vid­ed such vital com­mu­ni­ca­tion links, and the oper­a­tors are vol­un­tary and def­i­nite­ly don’t want to be paid.”
When the mas­sive earth­quake struck ear­ly Feb­ru­ary 27, the Red Chile­na Nor Aus­tral de Ser­vi­cios (RECNA) and RCCH net­works worked in coor­di­na­tion with the army han­dling infor­ma­tion about locat­ing miss­ing per­sons, con­di­tion of roads and sup­port for the emer­gency administration.
The magnitude‑8.8 earth­quake result­ed in more than 720 deaths, 1.5 mil­lion destroyed homes along with dam­age to roads, bridges and oth­er infrastructure.
The RCCH has expressed its thanks to the world’s radio ama­teurs for keep­ing emer­gency fre­quen­cies free dur­ing their nation’s time of need. All pre­vi­ous­ly announced HF fre­quen­cies are not cur­rent­ly required for emer­gency communications.
— Jim Lin­ton VK3PC, Chair­man, IARU Region 3 Dis­as­ter Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Committee.