They also were recorded in emergency QSO mode and broadcast on the BBC
World Service last night (EST).
73, Joe
Todd Ruby wrote:
Sorry if anyone thinks this is off topic but this kind of positive
press coverage for ham radio is well needed, deserved and appreciated.
Way to go VU2RBI es mni tnx!
de
WB2ZAB
todd
washingtonpost.com
Wave of Destruction, Wave of Salvation
Ham Radio Operator on a Chance Visit to a Remote Indian Island Becomes
a Lifeline
By Rama Lakshmi
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, January 2, 2005; Page D01
PORT BLAIR, India -- About one month ago, Bharathi Prasad and her
team of six young ham radio operators landed in this remote island
capital with a hobbyist's dream: Set up a station and establish a new
world record for global ham radio contacts. In the world of ham slang,
it was called a "Dxpedition."
"It is a big honor to come to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and
operate. There is no ham activity here because it is considered a very
sensitive area by the Indian government," said Prasad, a 46-year-old
mother of two from New Delhi.
In fact, the last ham activity in these scattered islands in the Bay
of Bengal, 900 miles east of the Indian mainland, occurred in 1987,
when Prasad set up a station in Port Blair and made 15,500 calls. "I
had always wanted to come back and break that record," she said.
This time, Prasad set up an antenna in her hotel and turned Room 501
into a radio station. She made more than 1,000 contacts every day and
said she operated "almost all day and all night, with just three hours
of sleep."
In the early hours of Dec. 26, while the other hotel guests were fast
asleep, Prasad's room was crackling with the usual squawks and beeps.
At 6:29 a.m., she felt the first tremors of an earthquake. The tables
in her room started shaking violently. She jumped up and shouted,
"Tremors!" into her microphone. Then the radio went dead. She ran out
and alerted the hotel staff and other guests.
But with that one word, she had alerted the world of radio hams, too.
Within a few hours, the extent of the damage was clear to everyone in
Port Blair. But the tsunami had knocked out the power supply and
telephone service of the entire archipelago of 500 islands, leaving
the capital virtually cut off from the rest of India.
Undaunted, Prasad set up a temporary station on the hotel lawn with
the help of a generator -- and put the city back on the ham radio map.
"I contacted Indian hams in other states and told them about what had
happened. The whole world of radio hams were looking for us, because
they had not heard from us after the tremors," she said later. "But I
also knew this was going to be a big disaster. I immediately abandoned
my expedition and told all radio operators to stop disturbing me. I
was only on emergency communication from then on."
While news of the death and devastation caused by the tsunami in other
parts of India was quickly transmitted around the world, the fate of
the Andamans and Nicobars was slow to unfold.
Prasad kept broadcasting information about the situation to anyone who
could hear her radio. Over and over, she repeated that there was no
power, no water, no phone lines.
On Monday morning, she marched into the district commissioner's office
and offered her services. "What is a ham?" he asked her. After she
explained, he let her set up a radio station in his office, and a
second one on Car Nicobar, the island hit hardest.
For the next two days, as the government grappled with the collapsed
communication infrastructure, Prasad's ham call sign, VU2RBI, was the
only link for thousands of Indians who were worried about their
friends and families in the islands. She also became the hub for
relief communications among officials.
"Survivors in Car Nicobar were communicating with their relatives in
Port Blair through us," she said. When the phone lines were restored
on Tuesday, Prasad's team in Car Nicobar radioed information about
survivors to her team in Port Blair, whose members then called anxious
relatives on the mainland to tell them that their loved ones were
alive and well.
Prasad also helped 15 foreign tourists, including several from the
United States, send news to their families. Offers of relief aid
poured in from around the world through her radio, and she directed
them to government officials. She also arranged for volunteer doctors
to be sent from other Indian states.
Now she has become so popular in the islands, and in the ham world,
that she said she has been affectionately nicknamed the "Teresa of the
Bay of Bengal."
When the earthquake occurred, Prasad's worried husband called her from
New Delhi and asked her to return home immediately.
"He reminded me that I have two children to look after back home," she
said, laughing. "I told him that as a ham radio operator, I have a
duty in times of disaster."
Under India's strict communications laws, a ham cannot leave home with
his or her radio without going through an elaborate bureaucratic
process to obtain permission from various ministries.
Prasad said that after her first expedition to Port Blair, she spent
17 years begging and badgering officials before she was allowed to
return.
Now she hopes her work in the aftermath of the tsunami will ease the
path for other hams in India.
"She looked like a simple housewife when she checked in," recalled
Ravi Singh, the hotel manager in Port Blair. "But now I marvel at the
courage she has shown."
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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