[TowerTalk] Great press for Ham Radio

[Todd Ruby]

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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