Philip­pine Ama­teur Radio Asso­ci­a­tion (PARA) acti­vat­ed its Ham Emer­gency Radio
Oper­a­tions (HERO) last Sat­ur­day in view of the immi­nent tra­verse of typhoon Nona (Inter­na­tion­al Name — Melor) through the Philip­pine arch­i­pel­ago as announced by the Nation­al Traf­fic Sys­tem Chair­man DU1VHY Jojo Vicen­cio on air dur­ing the 7am DU NET.

As of this time, Nona (Melor) is trav­el­ing west­ward. The weather.com.ph ser­vice site issued a bul­letin at 8:00 P.M. local time say­ing that the “the Eye of Typhoon MELOR (NONA) has made its sec­ond land­fall over Bulu­san, Sor­so­gon at around 4–5 PM this after­noon. It is cur­rent­ly mov­ing towards Ticao and Burias Islands.

Stormy Weath­er will con­tin­ue to pre­vail across the Bicol Region through­out the evening. A Weath­er Philip­pines Auto­mat­ed Weath­er Sta­tions (AWS) in Casig­u­ran, Sor­so­gon (Brgy. Cen­tral) has record­ed a Typhoon Force Wind Gusts of 185 kph from 5:10 PM to 5:20 PM today.”

HERO is using 7.095 MHz LSB as its call­ing fre­quen­cy for emer­gency traf­fic and PARA has request­ed neigh­bor­ing mem­ber asso­ci­a­tions to keep clear of the fre­quen­cy except for emer­gency traffic.

ORARI has abid­ed by the PARA request and some of its mem­bers could be heard last Sun­day Decem­ber 13, 2015 request­ing sta­tions stray­ing into the fre­quen­cy to QSY. Dan­ny Hal­im, YB2TVJ, was heard request­ing YB sta­tions to QSY and to keep the fre­quen­cy exclu­sive­ly open for emer­gency traffic.

Start­ing as ear­ly at 5:30am of Decem­ber 14, 2015, Jojo, DU1VHY; Thel­ma, DU1IVT and Romy, DU1SMQ were on hand to mon­i­tor the fre­quen­cy. Sta­tions from the
East­ern Visayas or DU5 area — pre­vi­ous­ly hit by Super Typhoon Haiyan in 2013,
ACCESS5 and RADNET5 ham clubs — and those from the Bicol region or DU4 area,
ACES, ARCC, AREA, CANORA, CARE4 and ISLACOM ham clubs, checked into the emer­gency net and report­ed their preparations.

Nona (Melor) made it first land­fall in the vicin­i­ty between Catar­man, Northern
Samar and Sor­so­gon in the South­ern Luzon. Sta­tions in East­ern Samar and Tacloban
City were on hand to cov­er what­ev­er eventuality.

Some hams are embed­ded in their local dis­as­ter risk reduc­tion and management
councils/offices. Also very active is the sta­tion of DV5PO Lester Price of Boron­gan, East­ern Samar in giv­ing updates.

At mid­day, the province of Albay declared a state of immi­nent emer­gency and declared all work sus­pend­ed, declared no-class­es for all lev­els, and closed down com­mer­cial estab­lish­ments. The dec­la­ra­tion is the go-sig­nal for local gov­ern­ment units (LGUs) to acti­vate gov­ern­ment spend­ing for emer­gen­cies and dis­as­ters. Pre-emp­tive evac­u­a­tions were done for coastal towns in dan­ger of dan­ger­ous storm surges on both DU4 and DU5 areas since Sun­day as report­ed by HERO stations.

As the storm pro­gress­es through the Bicol region, PARA mem­bers con­tin­ued to give reports on 7.095 with their back up pow­er. The pro­ject­ed typhoon path is west­er­ly through Sibuyan Sea towards the islands of Mas­bate and a pos­si­ble third land­fall in the north­ern­most part of Ori­en­tal Min­doro near the munic­i­pal­i­ty of Cala­pan by tomor­row, Decem­ber 15.

-Ramon J. Anquilan DU1UGZ.