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Anyone Listening? Ham radio operators: first voices |
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February 5, 2001
GANDHINAGAR, India-- (Bangla2000/AP) - "Everything here is panicky! Everything has collapsed!" was one of the first messages out of western India after hundreds of villages crumbled in an earthquake that killed thousands. For four days, before telephone and mobile services were partially restored, the voices of two amateur ham radio operators were among the quake-zone's vital links to the outside world for news about casualties and relief needs. The record of the transmissions - by computer engineer Ram Mohan and ham radio instructor N. Ravi in Bhuj, near the epicenter - offer a terrifyingly vivid account of the first days after the Jan. 26 quake had leveled whole towns. "We can't count the bodies. There are too many. It's impossible to count. Everything is buried under debris," the two distraught operators shouted. Mohan and Ravi were among 10 volunteers from southern India to reach Gujarat state the evening of a 7.7-magnitude quake. The first message from Bhuj was sent the following morning. A ham operator control room was set up in Gandhinagar, the Gujarat capital, 320 kilometers (200 miles) east of Bhuj. Some 200 messages were received on the first day over the high frequency band from Bhuj about the need for doctors, medicines, ambulances and cranes. "Soon urgent messages about patients who had lost both legs or whose arms had to be amputated were sent so the nearest hospital could be warned to prepare," said S.B. Ram, manager of the National Institute of Amateur Radio, which teaches ham operating skills in Hyderabad in southern India. About 40 operators from all over India reached the worst affected villages and towns to set up more than 20 stations in makeshift hospitals and relief camps in a matter of days. Worried people from Britain, France and Switzerland sent messages to trace the whereabouts of relatives who were touring historic sites in Gujarat. Calls came pouring in from Indians at home and abroad to inquire about family members or friends. The messages ranged from a simple, "Where are you? Take care," to this plea to find a relative in Bhuj: "Please find him. He's deaf and dumb." "We got hundreds of responses for adoption from ham operators all over the world who listened when we got news of a 25-day-old baby found alive under the debris. She had lost her parents," said S.B. Ram. Deepak Dave, general manager of marketing for Ambuja Cement, said time made all the difference when he approached ham operators for news about his sister's family in Gandhidham. Apartment houses had come crashing down in the town. "Seconds after the earthquake you could not reach telephone lines anywhere. I desperately wanted to know if my sister and her two kids were safe," said Dave. "I realized the difference of getting information in 24 hours or waiting for a few days for news in a calamity." The operators traveled with aid groups to remote villages to contact people in affected areas and send information to government and relief agencies about supplies needed. There are 30,000 licensed ham operators in India, of which 500 are active users. Japan, with 1.2 million, has the largest chunk of ham operators in a worldwide figure of 3 million. They tune into a high frequency band to communicate via voice or Morse code and each user has a personal code name or number that follows the country code, such as "vu" for India. In Bhuj, two days after the earthquake, Mohan and Ravi ran out of drinking water and survived on biscuits before supplies reached them. "They slept on the road with blankets on the first two days because there were no tents," said Ram. Operators complain that since amateur radio is categorized as a hobby, Indian policy makers don't take them seriously. The ham operators have come through in disasters before, however. When a supercyclone that killed 10,000 people in eastern Orissa state hit in 1999, ham operators made their way to the chief minister's house in the capital, Bhubaneshwar, and enabled him tell the federal government in New Delhi that the storm had devastated the state. "This system works when expensive satellite communications fail. We can set up a second line of communication anytime, anywhere, anyplace in half an hour," said Pravin Valera, a sub-inspector in Gujarat who is a ham operator. Operators have asked the government to set up ham operating systems in small towns and villages and teach skills to school children. The team of 40 operators often volunteers to open up communication to villages and towns suffering from cyclones, landslides, or train and plane accidents. "If they had this communication in or near Bhuj, relief would have reached faster," said Ram. "Maybe more lives could have been saved." |