Japan Earth­quake (update 4) dis­as­ter facts emerge
Japan remains under its worst threat to an ever ris­ing toll, wide­spread destruc­tion, pow­er, fuel and water short­ages fol­low the mas­sive earth­quake, tsuna­mi and failed 40-year old nuclear pow­er station.
IARU Region 3 Sec­re­tary, Ken Yamamo­to JA1CJP said the Japan Ama­teur Radio League (JARL) HQ sta­tion JA1RL and oth­er ama­teur sta­tions are main­tain­ing their effort to sup­port the dis­as­ter relief operation.
Ken JA1CJP said, “In less dam­aged areas, the elec­tric pow­er sup­ply is being restored grad­u­al­ly and local ama­teur radio club mem­bers have start­ed to estab­lish sta­tions at shelters.”
The infor­ma­tion is being coor­di­nat­ed as part of an organ­ised res­cue and relief effort. It seems like­ly to con­tin­ue for some weeks and months to come. The 8.9 on the Richter scale quake hit off north-east­ern Sendai and trig­gered a ten-metre tsuna­mi on Friday.
Ken JA1CJP quot­ing local news sources said, “The sit­u­a­tion is get­ting worse. On March 15, police announced that 2,414 peo­ple have been killed (up from 1,627 24 hours ear­li­er) and 3,118 are report­ed miss­ing (about dou­ble in the same peri­od). “Some 55,380 houses/buildings were dam­aged by the earth­quake and 3,000 hous­es washed away by the tsunami.”
Res­cue teams have arrived and start­ed their activ­i­ties in the affect­ed areas. They came from many nations includ­ing Korea, Sin­ga­pore, New Zealand, Chi­na, USA, Ger­many, Switzer­land, Aus­tralia and Russia.
In all the Japan­ese gov­ern­ment has received help from 91 nations and ter­ri­to­ries and nine inter­na­tion­al organisations.
Ken JA1CJP said anoth­er wor­ry is leak­age of radio-active gasses at the Fukushi­ma nuclear plant which was dam­aged by the earth­quake and tsunami.
A short­age of fuel, dis­rup­tion to rail and road trans­port have been report­ed from many affect­ed areas still recov­er­ing from the worst earth­quake in 140 years fol­lowed by a wide­spread tsuna­mi that swept away so much.
JA1RL con­tin­ues to oper­ate under instruc­tion to be an emer­gency traf­fic cen­tre and increas­ing­ly receiv­ing help from JARL mem­bers in the affect­ed area. It is using the 7 MHz SSB, 144 MHz SSB/FM and 430 MHz SSB/FM.
Many oth­er sta­tions are active and are using var­i­ous fre­quen­cies includ­ing some bat­tery pow­ered and oth­ers using small gen­er­a­tors to exchange res­cue and dis­as­ter relief oper­a­tion infor­ma­tion with JA1RL and others.
While 3525, 7030, 7043 and 7075 have been men­tioned as in use, it’s wise to keep those and all of the Cen­tre of Emer­gency (CoA) clear of nor­mal and non-urgent traf­fic. There is no call for addi­tion­al for­eign radio amateurs.
— Jim Lin­ton, VK3PC, Chair­man IARU Region 3 Dis­as­ter Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Committee.