The lat­est from Japan
The ama­teur radio activ­i­ty is con­tin­u­ing to help those main­ly with­in the dis­as­ter recov­ery area struck by the worst earth­quake in Japan in 140 years.
IARU Region 3 Sec­re­tary, Ken Yamamo­to JA1CJP said “sev­er­al sta­tions are han­dling medi­um dis­tance infor­ma­tion exchange on 7.030/7.043 MHz. The oper­a­tion in VHF and UHF bands becomes more active than in ear­li­er days.
About 250 trans­ceivers with JARL licens­es are used for com­mu­ni­ca­tions between var­i­ous refugee rest places and local gov­ern­ment offices.
Two sets of 430 MHz repeaters have also been deliv­ered to the dis­as­ter area and they are oper­a­tional now to enhance the exist­ing repeaters cov­er­age and pro­vide eas­i­er com­mu­ni­ca­tions between hand-held transceivers.”
The big earth­quake, now grad­ed at nine on the Ritch­er scale, and fol­lowed by a tsuna­mi hit north-east­ern Japan on 11 March, and crip­pled a nuclear pow­er facil­i­ty. More than 13,500 have been killed.
The head­quar­ters sta­tion of the Japan Ama­teur League (JARL) in Tokyo, JA1RL became a dis­as­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion cen­tre in the days imme­di­ate­ly after the disaster.
Ken JA1CJP said, “It should be not­ed that some towns are so heav­i­ly dis­rupt­ed that the local gov­ern­ment offices are also in the refugee cen­tres and the res­i­dents are stay­ing in mul­ti­ple places. In such cas­es, ama­teur radio can con­tribute a lot to main­tain the ties between the local gov­ern­ment and residents.”
In the long haul the emer­gency com­mu­ni­ca­tions to be pro­vid­ed through ama­teur radio, as the dis­rup­tion to nor­mal life will con­tin­ue for some con­sid­er­able time to come.
A pre­sen­ta­tion on the Japan­ese earth­quake triple dis­as­ter will be made at the GAREC 2011 in Sun City, South Africa, in August this year.
— Jim Lin­ton VK3PC, Chair­man, IARU Dis­as­ter Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Committee.