When the tor­ren­tial rain feel for sev­er­al days in South India, numer­ous areas were flood­ed. Author­i­ties, hun­dreds of hous­es sub­merged, and the death toll was at about 300 and rising.

Gopal Mad­ha­van VU2GMN report­ed that some areas had 3 to 4 metres of water which meant that all ground floor hous­es were inun­dat­ed and own­ers lost everything.

He said the flood­ing hit an area of more than three mil­lion peo­ple in Chin­nai, with respon­ders from the army, navy, home guards and the nation­al dis­as­ter action forces all involved with res­cue and relief work. Hun­dreds of injured peo­ple were tak­en to hospitals.

Gopal VU2GMN said most hams were also iso­lat­ed in their homes as nor­mal pas­sen­ger cars could not nego­ti­ate the high waters.

He also report­ed that the pow­er sup­ply was cut off in most areas as the elec­tric­i­ty dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tems were under water. The mobile phone and land­lines were dras­ti­cal­ly affected.

Gopal VU2GMN said: “Once it became pos­si­ble to move, hams start­ed going out assist­ing with deliv­ery of food and water to strand­ed indi­vid­u­als, and with res­cue from tall build­ings where peo­ple were trapped.”

Nation­al Coor­di­na­tor for Dis­as­ter Com­mu­ni­ca­tion in India, Jayu Bhide VU2JAU put out the call for more help with emer­gency communications.

Already a net­work was on two local VHF repeaters that con­tin­ued to work well, and the 7.090 MHz fre­quen­cy was main­ly on stand­by for long dis­tance work.

Jayu VU2JAU explained that traf­fic being han­dled includ­ing dis­tri­b­u­tion of food, locat­ing miss­ing per­sons and oth­er information.

He said: “The num­ber of hams has increased sub­stan­tial­ly, a con­trol room has been estab­lished to coor­di­nate efforts and more vol­un­teer organ­i­sa­tions have swung into action to pro­vide food and water.

“Many mobile ham sta­tions are now active to become active in loca­tions not pos­si­ble earlier.”

With­out recharg­ing pow­er the deple­tion of hand held trans­ceiv­er bat­ter­ies was a prob­lem, but bat­tery pow­ered mobiles were able to help keep com­mu­ni­ca­tion going.

Hams con­tin­ued their work that is expect­ed to take sev­er­al days, while recov­ery from the dis­as­ter is like­ly to take a num­ber of months.

Rail ser­vices were divert­ed to Chen­nai to car­ry food and oth­er essen­tial sup­plies, while the near­by busy inter­na­tion­al air­port was closed for a time dis­rupt­ing flights, but seems to have returned to near normal.

Many indus­tries in the large city were also shut down, along with the state-run Chen­nai Petro­le­um oil refinery.

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