First week of Japan disaster
JARL HQ sta­tion JA1RL and oth­er ama­teur sta­tions are main­tain­ing the effort to sup­port dis­as­ter relief oper­a­tion which is being cap­tured by audio and vision.
IARU Region 3 Sec­re­tary, Ken Yamamo­to JA1CJP said in less dam­aged areas, the pow­er sup­ply is being restored grad­u­al­ly and local ama­teur radio club mem­bers have start­ed to estab­lish sta­tions at shel­ters either on HF, VHF or UHF bands.
Ken Yamamo­to said, “The radio ama­teurs in the affect­ed areas are also mak­ing use of UHF repeaters for com­mu­ni­ca­tions between shel­ters and local dis­as­ter relief centres.
“Accord­ing to reports from the shel­ters, they are gen­er­al­ly short­ages of food, drink­ing water, fuel and med­ical goods. This is main­ly due to dif­fi­cul­ty of trans­porta­tion because of road sit­u­a­tion and staff shortage.”
He said JA1RL con­tin­ues to oper­ate under instruc­tion to be an emer­gency traf­fic cen­tre. Using the 7 MHz, 144 MHz and 430 MHz bands it is receiv­ing help from JARL mem­bers in the affect­ed areas.
Field sta­tions are using var­i­ous fre­quen­cies, includ­ing some bat­tery pow­ered and oth­ers using small gen­er­a­tors. Each is exchang­ing 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 fre­quen­cies clear of nor­mal and non-urgent traf­fic. There is no call for addi­tion­al for­eign radio amateurs.
Ken JA1CJP notes that JARL has received many e‑mail mes­sages from radio ama­teur radio soci­eties and indi­vid­ual hams of many nations and ter­ri­to­ries in all six continents.
“These mes­sages con­vey their con­do­lences, sym­pa­thies and prayers for the peo­ple in Japan. JARL appre­ci­ates them very much and is encour­aged by them,” he said.
“I have also picked up some update infor­ma­tion from news sources. The sit­u­a­tion is get­ting worse. On March 17, police announced 5,178 peo­ple have been killed and 8,913 are miss­ing. The num­bers are sharply ris­ing as most affect­ed areas become acces­si­ble by search and res­cue teams,” he said.
The teams are from Aus­tralia, Chi­na, Korea, Sin­ga­pore, New Zealand, USA, Ger­many, Switzer­land and Russia.
The sta­tus of Fukushi­ma nuclear plant is still seri­ous and local res­i­dents with­in 20km radius have been evacuated.
It has been a week since the 8.9 on the Richter scale quake, the worst in 140 years, hit off Sendai trig­ger­ing a ten-metre tsunami.
State­ments issued by Ver­tex Stan­dard Yae­su said its cen­tre at Fukushi­ma was cur­rent­ly out of action, while Icom and Ken­wood are locat­ed else­where and not suf­fered the same out­age. No reports have been received from oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ers at this time.
— Jim Lin­ton, VK3PC, Chair­man IARU Region 3 Dis­as­ter Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Committee.