Japan triple dis­as­ter the latest
As mis­ery con­tin­ues since the earth­quake, tsuna­mi and nuclear acci­dent hit north-east­ern Japan on 11 March, the police death toll has reached 11,603 dead and 17,258 missing.
The head­quar­ters sta­tion of the Japan Ama­teur Radio League (JARL) in Tokyo, JA1RL became a dis­as­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion cen­tre in the days imme­di­ate­ly after the disaster.
Inter­na­tion­al Ama­teur Radio Union (IARU) Region 3 Sec­re­tary, Ken Yamamo­to JA1CJP reports that they trans­mit­ted res­cue requests includ­ing the needs of refugee cen­tre facil­i­ties down to the basics of elec­tric­i­ty, water and gas supplies.
Ken JA1CJP said that hand-held VHF and UHF trans­ceivers are now being deliv­ered to the local dis­as­ter relief centres.
“The equip­ment is being used to estab­lish VHF/UHF net­works for refugee cen­tres and local dis­as­ter relief,” he said.
HF com­mu­ni­ca­tions for dis­as­ter relief are still being oper­at­ed occa­sion­al­ly by some vol­un­teer radio ama­teurs, but JARL HQ sta­tions were off the air by Fri­day, 25 March.
“JARL express­es its appre­ci­a­tion to all radio ama­teurs for their coop­er­a­tion to keep 7.030MHz clear for dis­as­ter relief com­mu­ni­ca­tions,” said Ken JA1CJP.
While relief efforts con­tin­ue, con­cerns are still being expressed about the crip­pled Fukushi­ma plant that is the worst nuclear acci­dent in Japan’s his­to­ry. The cri­sis has still not been over­come. It’s a wor­ry­ing time for the plant dam­aged by the earth­quake and tsuna­mi – mea­sur­ing 8.9 on the Richter scale and the worst for that nation in 140-years.
— Jim Lin­ton VK3PC, Chair­man, IARU Region 3, Dis­as­ter Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Committee