Haiti Update No. 5
Sun­day, Jan­u­ary 17th, 2010
The eight ama­teurs from Radio Club Domini­cano (RCD) who were oper­at­ing under the call­sign HI8RCD/HH have had to abort their oper­a­tions after the con­voy they were trav­el­ling in was fired on.
EB9GF, who is inte­grat­ed in the Span­ish Red Cross con­tin­gent, was able to con­tact the col­leagues from the Radio Club Domini­cano (RCD). The RCD has cur­rent­ly two VHF repeaters in use for operations:
— 146.970 (-600), CTCSS 100 Hz. Placed in the Domini­can Repub­lic. Please note that the old fre­quen­cy 147.970 seems to be wrong.
— 145.350 (-600), CTCSS 100 Hz. New repeater active near the bor­der with Haiti.
RCD ini­tial­ly report­ed that their team crossed the Hait­ian bor­der at 10:50 hours Hait­ian time arriv­ing at the Domini­can Embassy in Haiti at 14:29 hours when they start­ed installing and test­ing their equipment.
With­in a few hours though, reports via the RCD Face­book page con­firmed by a long tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion between Hugo Ramón HI8VRS and Ramon Sany­oyo V, XE1KK report­ed that the HI8RCD team of eight ama­teurs, were back in the bor­der town of Jimani (Domini­can Repub­lic). Their con­voy, which includ­ed oth­er non relat­ed Domini­cans, was assault­ed and one per­son report­ed dead.
The Radio Ama­teurs were unin­jured but decid­ed to leave the cap­i­tal for safe­ty and return to the bor­der unescort­ed. They report the sit­u­a­tion as extreme­ly unsafe and scary.
The repeaters they have installed remain in ser­vice link­ing the Hait­ian and Domini­can cap­i­tals, and are being used by the Red Cross and Civ­il Defense since there is no oth­er way to com­mu­ni­cate. The sta­tion at the Embassy in Haiti could not be acti­vat­ed though.
To con­firm, all mem­bers of the HCD team are safe and have returned to Jiman­ji in the Domini­can Republic.
In oth­er reports, John Henault HH6JH who is engaged in Mis­sion­ary work with home­less chil­dren in Port au Prince con­tin­ues to make con­tacts on 20m using pow­er from a neighbour’s gen­er­a­tor and very pleased that ama­teur radio enabled him to let his friends in the USA know he was alive.
Anoth­er radio ama­teur in the coun­try, Pierre Petry HH2/HB9AMO who works for the UN food pro­gram is also safe. How­ev­er noth­ing is known at this stage of about anoth­er ten hams in Haiti.
Thanks to Ismael EA4FSI, Cesar HR2P and Jim VK3PC for their reports.
— Greg Mossop, G0DUB IARU Region 1 Emer­gency Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Co-Ordinator.