PUERTO RICO

170925 Over the weekend, the American Red Cross (ARC) asked the ARRL for assistance in recruiting 50 radio amateurs who can help record, enter, and submit disaster-survivor information into the ARC Safe and Well system. That request was fulfilled today. In the nearly 75-year relationship between ARRL and ARC, this is the first time such a request for assistance on this scale has been made. [Source: ARRL]

210810 Ham radio provides emergency comms in Puerto Rico

The Miami Herald has published a major article about what happened when Hurricane Maria cut off a town in Puerto Rico, and an amateur radio operator found a way to get messages out.

As the sun spilled over the storm-stricken mountains of Puerto Rico, all Pedro Labayen KP4DKE could see from his home in Utuado was a river. Hurricane Maria had flooded the town’s main avenue, leaving behind potholes, fallen electric poles and floating cars.

Flash floods destroyed five bridges across the municipality. Furious winds and rain ripped the roofs off over five hundred homes. Four hundred people sheltered in government refuges. Landslides of sandy, volcanic soil destroyed mountain roads.

Behind Pedro’s home, three elderly bedridden sisters perished under an avalanche of mud.

But he didn’t know yet the proportions of death and destruction that surrounded him. The monstrous 2017 storm had cut off his town from the rest of the island and the world.

Power did not come back to the town centre until months later. It took a year for some remote parts of Utuado to get electricity back. Equipped with the ham radio technology he had loved for decades, KP4DKE set up a communications system over the airwaves that spanned international borders. It enabled residents to tell loved ones they were alive, coordinate aid for people in need, and notify authorities about new developments.

He formed the Community Emergency Communications Plan of Utuado. And now the homegrown network of ham radio operators empowers the mountain municipality’s residents, offering avenues for crisis communication that are resistant to hurricanes, earthquakes and other natural disasters.

In 1970, at the age of 19, Labayen studied for his first ham-radio license, allowing him to send and receive transmissions on regulated airwaves.

In the foyer of his home in the town centre, Pedro set up a hardware and school supply shop. Until the coronavirus pandemic, he sold books and materials to students attending the rural campus of the University of Puerto Rico. Between customers, he tunes into the radio in the store.

Of amateur radio, KP4DKE said that “Apart from being experimenters, we are ambassadors of peace and good between countries and we exchange our cultures,” he said.

“Radio amateurs are linked to emergencies. When storms came, phones weren’t available. I would participate in all of those events,” Pedro said. “I would go to Civil Defence with my gear. I was the one who supplied the communications at the Utuado level.”

When Category 3 Hurricane Georges devastated Puerto Rico in 1998, KP4DKE was able to communicate with foreign embassies. When army members in Fort Buchanan, the only US federal military installation in the region, couldn’t reach out to their superiors in the United States, Pedro linked them.

Twenty years later, Hurricane Maria arrived. The storm struck Utuado and the rest of Puerto Rico with a fury that no living generation had ever witnessed. Like millions of others, Pedro and his wife were left in shock, attempting to grasp the destruction of the landscape before them.

THE BRIDGE

Before Maria arrived, KP4DKE tucked away the antennas that usually stuck out from his house like metallic trees, to protect them from the storm.

In the aftermath of the hurricane, he set up a simple transmitter on his roof with the help of a neighbour. A solar panel and a car battery energised his equipment, Pedro began to scan for signs of life in the vast airwaves.

A station in the neighbouring Dominican Republic responded, breaking the stillness of Maria’s silence.

Pedro said “I told the Dominicans, I need your help. And they said, “no problem.”

Neighbours and strangers started showing up at Pedro’s house, bringing hundreds of written messages to his doorstep for him to send out over the radio.

The radio operator would send signals every morning over the Mona Passage that separates Puerto Rico and Hispaniola. When radio stations in the Dominican Republic responded, “the bridge” — as the system came to be known — settled into place.

In the afternoons, Pedro would make his way on foot to the broadcast radio station WUPR that was miraculously still on the air. Along with a station’s anchor, he read the replies townsfolk had been praying to hear.

As help began to trickle in and officials restored power and cleared roads, people who had witnessed Pedro’s work during Hurricane Maria approached the radio operator. They wanted to learn how to communicate over the airwaves too.

He taught his first radio class of 15 people at the local emergency management office. Then, when one hundred people signed up from towns as far as the coastal cities of Arecibo and Hatillo, the teacher and students migrated to a municipal theatre.

Now, under the Community Emergency Communications Plan of Utuado, every neighbourhood has at least one licensed radio operator who can go on the airwaves should telecommunications collapse. Local authorities and emergency services, including police, hospitals, and firefighters, became part of the network. Families and individuals not licensed to operate as ham radio users are taught to use regular hand-held radios to send and receive messages over public frequencies.

One new recruit, Zulma Dueño KP4ZDR, joined the Utuado Radio Amateurs Association, the backbone of the community plan that Pedro still leads.

From a table in her kitchen, surrounded by the ham radio certificates and awards she has received, Zulma chats away with other local operators.

She said “As soon as a storm passes, I can communicate with the police, I can communicate with medical emergencies, I can communicate with another town,”.

She said “The Amateur Radio Association for me is a family,” “Because if anything happens to you, they quickly help.”

The much more detailed full article, written by Syra Ortiz-Blanes, can be found on the Miami Herald website at

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/article253118713.html

Just head for the World Americas area – and there are plenty of photos and a video to see too.