New
Delhi: "Help us", "Can you find my aged parents" --
distress messages like these are flooding ham radio operators assisting in
efforts to reunite families in disaster-hit Uttarakhand.
Immediately after the mayhem, some ham radio
volunteers rushed to the affected areas and were supported by fellow operators
across the country. Soon this mode became an important lifeline of
communication in the disaster-affected areas where telecommunication networks
were extensively damaged during the rains.
Radio amateurs use a variety of voice, text,
image and data communication modes and have access to frequency allocations
throughout the radio frequency spectrum to enable communication across a city,
region, country, continent, the world, or even into space.
National Institute of Amateur Radio,
Hyderabad, has sent a team with radio equipment to the hill state and is
operating in co-ordination with Bharat Scouts and Guides, Dehradun.
Jose Jacob, VU2JOS, is operating from Dehradun
as the emergency communication base station.
"We are flooded with distress messages of
relatives of those who are missing in Uttarakhand. We are daily getting calls
from Kolkata, Delhi, Kerala, Rajkot," Jacob told a news agency.
"We pass on the missing list received to
the state secretariat," he said. Another ham station has been set up in
Barkot in Uttarkashi where Mukesh Gola, VU2MCW, is being assisted by three more
ham operators collecting information about missing persons through local ham
radio VHF network.
"Usually, we establish two-three master
control rooms linking the entire country and have local network for relief
operations like providing assistance for medical camps, movement of food and
other requirements. And also getting and passing on information to their
relatives, providing communication for district administration to monitor
smooth movement of relief operations," S Sathyapal, Director, Indian
Institute of Hams, told a news agency.
Though mobiles and satphones are in use, Ham
communication, which is recognised as second line of communication, plays
additional and important role in getting information for speedy relief
operations, Sathyapal said. Sometimes, mobile towers cannot take the required
load and satphones are not enough or reachable to the victims. These Ham communications are not restricted
to few kilometres, these travel to thousands of kilometres through ionosphere,
he said.
Sandeep Baruah, VU2MUE, a senior scientist at
Vigyan Prasar, Department of Science and Technology, is also operating the ham
radio station at Vigyan Prasar, New Delhi as a relay station for messages of
field stations.
There are 32 ham radio volunteers trained by
Vigyan Prasar, who would be helping the government agencies in Uttarakhand in
establishing a second line of radio communication network throughout the 13
districts of the state, he told a news agency.
As a part of the disaster mitigation effort,
an automated high altitude (10,000 ft) ham radio repeater station would be
established at Dhanaulti which would provide line of sight communication
support to the hams using low power handheld VHF radio equipment in
Uttarakhand, he said.
