Floods in Argenti­na — Final
Record flash floods have killed sev­er­al dozen peo­ple and destroyed thou­sands of homes in the Buenos Aires Province, Argenti­na, that suf­fered its heav­i­est April rain­fall since records began in 1906.
On Sat­ur­day there was heavy traf­fic on the 40 metre band, coor­di­nat­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions between the Radio­club La Pla­ta and oth­er areas who were send­ing food, cloth­ing and oth­er items to the flood­ed area. Jorge Sier­ra LU1AS of Buenos Aires reports that relief efforts are being coor­di­nat­ed by radio clubs that have played an impor­tant role dur­ing the disaster.
Net Con­trol Sta­tions were local radio clubs who told of road clo­sures, the loca­tion of the col­lec­tion cen­tres in the area and planned trans­porta­tion and recep­tion. The province’s cap­i­tal of La Pla­ta was bad­ly hit. The fre­quen­cies used are 7070 and 7120 MHz, with activ­i­ty by Emer­gen­ci­aslu Ama­teur (Ama­teur Radio Emer­gency Ser­vice of Argenti­na) plus VHF and UHF repeaters main­tained by the Radio­club La Pla­ta LU8DZE.
Com­mu­ni­ca­tion was helped by the use of the Inter­net, email and SMS which made it eas­i­er to locate some­one or make it known that radio sup­port was avail­able. Safe drink­ing water and pow­er sup­plies were the imme­di­ate con­cerns for the affect­ed peo­ple, with the media report­ing half of the homes in La Pla­ta were under water and the dam­age bill was esti­mat­ed at $5 billion.
The storms drenched Buenos Aires on Mon­day and Tues­day last week then tor­ren­tial rain fell on La Pla­ta dur­ing a two-hour peri­od one day lat­er, knock­ing out phone and pow­er lines. The flood­ing turned road­ways into rag­ing rivers.
Jorge LU1AS expressed thanks for keep­ing the emer­gency chan­nels clear and being oth­er­wise very help­ful dur­ing the unfor­tu­nate event.
Argenti­na has declared three days of nation­al mourning.
— Jim Lin­ton VK3PC Chair­man of the IARU Region 3 Dis­as­ter Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Committee.