Ham Radio Haiti Frequencies

So many hams have asked for frequencies to monitor the situation in Haiti that I have provided the following article from the ARES E-Letter. This should answer all your questions.
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The View from Flagler County
The ARES E-Letter
Editor: Rick Palm, K1CE


The almost-incomprehensible Haitian earthquake destruction is among the worst I've seen in my three decades of association with ARRL and disaster management/Amateur Radio communications. I monitored the SATERN Net on 14.265 MHz, and the Maritime Mobile Service Net on 14.300 MHz, where a Flagler County amateur Bill Sturridge, KI4MMZ, was performing a fine job relaying communications with Jean-Robert Gaillard, HH2JR, and others. I heard HH2JR, who had a good signal, say he was OK and didn't need anything at the moment, but had no power and no phone. The 14.300 MHz frequency is one of the three global "center of activity" disaster frequencies set aside by the International Amateur Radio Union (IARU). (For more on this plan, see the lead story below).

I also followed developments on the ARRL Web site, and the IARU Region 2 Web site. The IARU Region 2 Area C (which includes Haiti) Emergency Coordinator is long-time friend and emcomm veteran expert Arnie Coro, CO2KK, who requested amateurs to keep 3720 kHz and 7045 kHz frequencies clear for emergency communication until further notice. The overall IARU Region 2 Emergency Communications Coordinator (EMCOR) is Dr. Cesar Pio Santos, HR2P. I also found SITREPs on the VoIP SKYWARN/Hurricane Net Support Site.

A post to the Region 2 Web site reported this: "After arriving to Port au Prince an HI8RCD/HH team had to abort their mission due to the present insecurity. The eight member team arrived safely back to Jimani, Dominican Republic. The team installed a VHF repeater that covers both Port au Prince and Santo Domingo (DR) and is in use for the Red Cross and the Civil Defense.

"Victor Baez, HI8VB, Secretary of the Radio Club Dominicano (RCD) reported that the RCD with UDRA, the Unin Dominicana de Radio Aficionados, had prepared to go to Port au Prince last Friday to install the emergency station HI8RCD/HH and a mobile station. Victor has a blog [in Spanish], which hopefully he will update with more news from Haiti. The IARU Web site also suggested hams follow the news of the support radio amateurs are providing in Haiti on Twitter here."

The ARRL encouraged US amateurs to be aware of emergency operations on the following frequencies: 7.045 and 3.720 MHz (IARU Region 2 nets), 14.265, 7.265 and 3.977 MHz (SATERN nets), and 14.300 MHz (Intercontinental Assistance and Traffic Net); the International Radio Emergency Support Coalition (IRESC) is also active on EchoLink node 278173.

ARRL Media and Public Relations Manager Allen Pitts, W1AGP, stated "The ARRL has been in contact with communications leaders of the American Red Cross and Salvation Army, as well as other key Amateur Radio operators throughout the region. As teams from the hundreds of responding agencies worldwide are formed for deployment, many will have Amateur Radio components. ARRL is committed to providing communications aid to our served agencies and working with the international community in this time of crisis. At this time there are no known requests from agencies for amateurs to travel to Haiti, but this can change. If it develops that there are ARES assignments for a deployment in Haiti, these will be vetted and processed through each Section's Section Emergency Coordinators."

I wanted to be involved, but listened only, and did not transmit on any of the emergency frequencies as there was nothing I could contribute. Actually, when you think about it, not transmitting is a de facto contribution. I did make a donation to Doctors Without Borders, and that made me feel part of the relief effort.

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"Center of Activity" Frequencies for Disaster Communications

The International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) Administrative Council (AC) held its annual meeting in mid-October, 2009, in Christchurch, New Zealand. There has been a movement in the last several years to try to identify "centers of activity" frequencies across all three IARU regions that can be used in disaster relief operations. It has at times been difficult to arrive at a consensus on what frequencies should be used. The IARU Administrative Council noted that all three regions have now reached consensus on three global Center of Activity (CoA) frequencies for use in the event of emergencies: 14.300, 18.160 and 21.360 MHz. When no emergency operations are being conducted, these frequencies are open for normal amateur usage. However, GAREC-09 calls upon IARU member-societies, among others, "whenever emergency communications are being conducted on frequencies that propagate internationally, to use any available real-time communications channels, including but not limited to e-mail bulletins, web-sites, social networking and DX-clusters to draw the attention of the largest possible number of Amateur Radio operators to on-going emergency communications, in order to avoid interference with emergency traffic." Member-societies are being encouraged to develop an effective method of notifying amateurs within their own country of any such emergency traffic being handled on the CoA frequencies, or elsewhere in the amateur bands. - IARU Electronic Newsletter, November 2009

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Earthquake Preparedness

Tonight's Net Training was on earthquakes and was inspired by an article in the Deseret News. You can read the article by clicking here. Or here http://tinyurl.com/ybcjmm7.

Here are some more informative sites.

Utah Magnitude 7 Earthquake map
http://geology.utah.gov/utahgeo/hazards/eqfault/index.htm
http://tinyurl.com/ydulpnd

Recent Utah Earthquakes
http://www.seis.utah.edu/recenteqs/

http://www.seis.utah.edu/

For Utah liquifaction maps, try the following sites:

INFO
http://www.pwpds.slco.org/zoning/pdf/geologichazards/AppBliqbrochure.pdf

MAPS
http://geology.utah.gov/utahgeo/hazards/liquefy.htm
http://www.quake.utah.edu/lqthreat/liquefaction.shtml

Where is the best place to put your grab and go kit? Probably in your car. We do spend most of our time at home, but if we are anywhere else when the quake hits, having that equipment in the car will be valuable.

With a little Google searching you can find other hazards in your area such as gas stations, propane tanks, chemical storage, storage shed facilities (contents unknown) and other hazards.

The most important thing is to be ready to take care of your own family/co-workers for the first 72 hours and even up to 10 days.

In a magnitude 7 Utah quake, here are some estimates from the DesNews article.

Expect all cell phones and landline phones to go down initially.

The power going to go down. That's going to be for eight to 12 hours. And then when it does come back, it's going to be spotty.

80 percent of areas should have power restored within 30 days — a time frame that should be similar for restoring telephone systems.

Water systems will take longer. Some areas could be without water for three months. Sewer systems take even longer. They expect natural gas to perform a little better because of upgrades to pipes and systems recently.

Personal preparedness is the key.