HAMNET SARL EMERGENCY COMMUNICATION DIVISION 
Page down for the February 2010 SARL HAMNNET BULLETIN AND WEEKLY UPDATE
BREAKING NEWS
On Saturday morning within 80 minutes of this massive quake hitting Santiago and Conception in Chile, the International Radio Emergency Support Coalition had a net going to be available for emergency traffic! By 10am local time we already had 30 people around the globe on stand by and as I write this memo, the net has grown to over 90! We then had confirmation that U. S. Geological Survey (USGS) initiated a tsunami warning! Almost immediately after that, we had graphics on our web site www.iresc.org showing by every three hours where this tsunami is travelling over the Pacific Ocean – what time it will hit Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia and then all the countries in the Far East facing the pacific. Some of our members living in California knew about the warning due to direct activation by USGS. In Hawaii, at 6am their time (6pm local S.A. time) all warning sirens went off indicating a tsunami is on its way. In their telephone directory, when you open the first page, it shows a map of all the Islands with a grey area along the coast line “that must be evacuated” when the sirens go off. These sirens are tested on the 1st day of every month to ensure they are working. This time the sirens were not a drill! The wave at this time is estimated to be between 4 and 5 metres! Reports started coming in of the damage in the two earlier mentioned cities and that a state of ‘catastrophe’ has been declared by the President of Chile. In South Africa, all we really can do is be available should the need arise to render assistance by way of sending and receiving emergency messages. The problem was that the language in Chile is Spanish. What we did was immediately to get some Spanish/English speaking amateurs on frequency to assist with translations if necessary. However, our main concern was the tsunami heading across the Pacific! Chile is a country that has experienced many quakes – one in 1960 as high as 9.5 on the Richter scale with a death toll of 1600. Their buildings are far better structured to withstand such quakes which were not the case in Haiti! By 6am on Sunday morning, the tsunami warning has been withdrawn in many parts of the Pacific due to the waves not reaching danger levels. However, the value of rapid SMS and one or two e-mails worked well when we received news of the quake and it took but a few minutes to establish an emergency IRESC net around the world! Reporting foir SARL Hamnet is ZS6BUU HAMNET
AMATEUR RADIO EMERGENCY COMMUNICATION NETWORK
WHEN ALL FAILS AMATEUR RADIO SUCCEEDS
Something has gone terribly wrong. Normal ways of doing things are not working. The fastest way to turn an emergency into a full disaster is to lose communications.
Radio Amateurs understand emergencies. For over 70 years they have provided emergency communications for organisations. When normal ways of communication fail or get overloaded Radio Amateurs will be there.
HAMNET, the National Emergency Communications division of the South African Radio League (SARL), provides communications for emergencies and can mobilise experienced communicators who with their own radio equipment will back up official channels or take over when all else fails.
Listen to the weekly Hamnet report transmitted on Amateur Radio Mirror International 7 MARCH 2010 |
Listen to monthly Hamnet bulletin
March 2010 |
The SARL represents all Radio Amateurs in South Africa at all levels of Government and through the IARU at the International telecommunications Union.
Radio Amateurs or "Hams" use two-way radio communication to make contact with other radio amateurs all over the world. They are even able to use satellites and on occasion speak with astronauts. Radio Hams can do this from home or while mobile in cars, boats or on foot.
Radio Hams have a full range or communication modes at their disposal. These include plain voice, Morse code, numerous digital computer modes and even graphical modes like television. A licensed radio amateur is able to join in experiments using all these modes.
HAMNET REPORT 7 March 2010
During this week, two disaster Management meetings took place which were related to just one thing – communication. The second meeting was the most informative of the two and was held within the building which is to be known as the JCC – Joint Communication Centre.
From this room, all communications will take place before, during and after each game anywhere in South Africa. This means that the duty person for the day will have to report in at least one hour prior the start of the first game of the day and check out at least 1 hour after the end of the final game of the day. From 11 – 21 June – all day games start at 13:30 and the final game ends around 22:15 that evening. A long day!
However, with better planning, the day will in all probability be split into two sessions from 11:30 to 16:00 and the second session from 16:00 to 22:30. The attendance in this centre will be compulsory for the full duration of the whole Soccer World Cup as we need to cover all the Fan Parks, venues, accommodation centres etc for the whole of Gauteng, as well as all games being played in all the other cities around South Africa. Needless to say, this will probably apply to all the other centres around South Africa.
The latter half of the games, games only start at 16:00 and end at 22:15 or there abouts so this session will not be that long and could possibly be done by one person. A lot of planning still needs to be done.
The JCC building created many problems. No windows, as they are all sealed and it is a faraday cage – meaning to prevent stray or radiation from all the radio activity within the building. Undeterred, Howard, ZS6ZS, Chris ZS6COG and Francois ZS6BUU did some tests with our hand held’s and we found a way around it.
After the meeting, the three of us sat down and did some initial planning as to how we are going to overcome this problem and once we have permission to drill just 3 holes for roll bolts into the outside wall under a roof overhang, we will have no problem in erecting our communications system. Quite simply, we will operate UHF from the opps. room to the repeater on the roof and from there we will go out on 2 metres. The roof level is high and we will have no problem in covering every corner of our allocated area.
However, now we need to gather the volunteers and do some planning, training and prepare for the final stages of this event which will include some tests and fine tuning of some minor issues.
This is a wonderful opportunity as we will be making use of not only Hamnet members but also licensed amateur radio volunteers so they can get the feel of what such an operation entails! We have rounded the bend and now heading down the final straight – and the winning post looks very rosy!
Reporting for Hamnet, this is Francois Botha – ZS6BUU.
