Radio Amateurs in Japan Still Providing Communications Support

03/23/2011
On the afternoon of Friday, March 11, an 8.9 earthquake hit Northern Japan, followed by several big aftershocks and a devastating tsunami in the coastal areas. “In the early stage following the earthquake and tsunami, several radio amateurs were able to activate their stations with car batteries or small engine generators, despite the electric power outages,” IARU Region 3 Secretary Ken Yamamoto, JA1CJP, told the ARRL. “They transmitted rescue requests and information on the disaster situation -- including refugee centers and their needs -- and the availability of basic infrastructures, such as electricity, water and gas supplies.” After the earthquake and tsunami, there were no electricity, water or gas services in many of the affected areas.
In his report to the ARRL, Yamamoto said that the Japan Amateur Radio League (JARL) activated JA1RL, its headquarters station in Tokyo. With the help of many other amateurs, it also activated its regional headquarters station JA3RL in Osaka to communicate with the amateurs in the damaged areas, including its Tohoku headquarters station JA7RL in Sendai. “The communications were mostly on the 7 MHz band in daytime and the 3.5 MHz band at night,” Yamamoto explained. “Short range communications were also made on the 144 and 430 MHz bands. The information gathered through Amateur Radio communications was reported to the rescue and disaster relief organizations for their appropriate deployment. Some other amateurs accepted health-and-welfare inquiries from the suffered areas and the posted the information on the Internet.”
Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications -- that country’s equivalent of the FCC -- approved an additional 300 UHF/VHF transceivers to be used in the affected areas.
In the disaster area, many gas stations were also washed away; Yamamoto said that the fuel shortage was “a very serious problem in the cold climate. Calls for fuel were received over radio from many disaster areas, but delivery remained very difficult at least for the first week as the access roads were hacked up everywhere. Several days later, some Amateur Radio clubs reached the affected areas with their radio equipment and established communications for supporting disaster relief.”
Yamamoto told the ARRL that several radio equipment manufacturers offered “hundreds of VHF/UHF transceivers to JARL for the use at refugee centers and local disaster relief centers. These transceivers should help to establish mutual communications between refugee and disaster relief centers, and to facilitate smooth and appropriate delivery of disaster relief goods.”
As of noon JST on March 23 (0300 UTC), Japanese authorities announced that 9408 people have been killed and another 14,716 people have been reported missing due to the earthquake and tsunami.

via ARRL.net