Severe flood­ing described as the worst for a long time in the north of Malaysia dur­ing the mon­soon sea­son has tak­en five lives with about 160,000 peo­ple evacuated. 

John­ny Tan 9M8DB of the Malaysian Ama­teur Radio Trans­mit­ters’ Soci­ety (MARTS) says emcomm oper­a­tors are active on 7.110 MHz, with 3.600MHz like­ly to be test­ed for late night links to main­tain links to han­dle dis­as­ter traffic. 

MARTS asks all to avoid caus­ing QRM of these cen­tre-of-activ­i­ty emer­gency fre­quen­cies. He reports that the 50w sta­tions are in Kuala Lumpur, Kuan­tan, Kema­man and Bachok with 50 watts using NVIS propagation. 

John­ny 9M8DB says ini­tial­ly VHF/UHF repeaters were used, but severe flood­ing had affect­ed pow­er sup­ply and bat­ter­ies with the switch to HF being made. 

Offi­cial recog­ni­tion has received includ­ing per­mis­sion for the MARTS emcomm oper­a­tions to car­ry third par­ty traf­fic. In some places res­cuers are faced with rows of house rooftops pop­ping up from mud­dy water. 

Sea­son­al flood­ing hits Malaysia this time each year, but experts describe it as being the worst since at least 2004, and com­mu­ni­ca­tions have also been bad­ly hit. 

Mean­while in neigh­bour­ing Thai­land, dis­as­ter zones have been declared in eight south­ern provinces after floods there killed at least 13 peo­ple with 184,000 house­holds affected. 

— Jim Lin­ton VK3PC, Chair­man IARU Region 3 Dis­as­ter Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Committee.