An unexpected Tropical Cyclone, called GARANCE, developed East of Madagascar this week suddenly, but, unlike others which usually travel west towards eastern Africa, this one travelled east and then south east.

Phys.org/news says that CYCLONE GARANCE barreled across La Reunion Island on Friday killing at least two people as fierce winds left destruction across the French Indian Ocean territory, according to authorities.

Winds of up to 230 kilometers per hour battered the territory of 900,000 people and the storm earlier forced the closure of the main airport on nearby Mauritius.

One woman in her 50s was probably sucked into a sewer pipe and swept away in torrential water, the local prefect said, describing the storm as “brutal and violent”. A man was killed in an electrical fire and another person is missing, the prefecture said.

Some 180,000 households were without power, 80,000 without water while 114,000 people had lost mobile phone coverage, according to authorities. Residents posted pictures online of uprooted trees, torn-off roofs and flooded homes. Entire streets were inundated and cars washed away.

Authorities imposed a maximum alert for several hours on Friday, confining the entire population—including law enforcement and emergency services—to homes and offices. That was eventually eased so that police and emergency services could get out but authorities still ordered the rest of the population to remain indoors.

GARANCE landed on the island’s north and shifted south before heading back out to sea. And, while the violent gusts and torrential rain eased, heavy rain and strong winds persisted.

Around 100 troops and firefighters were to be dispatched from Mayotte—a French territory nearly 1,500 kilometers away—as soon as weather conditions permit. Another 100 were to go there from mainland France.

La Reunion and Mauritius—around 225 kilometers to the northeast—had been on high alert since Wednesday. Mauritius shut its main airport on Wednesday, while La Reunion did the same on Thursday.

Curiously, there has been little mention in weather circles, of a fairly strong looking storm cell at the bottom corner of Madagascar, and appearing to be drifting in a south-easterly direction away from the coast of eastern South Africa. It looks more extreme than the cloud cover over the French Islands associated with GARANCE.

When Brian Jacobs ZS6YZ, formerly deputy National Director of HAMNET, sent me the report on the Ride for Sight last week, he included some other news of interest to us. He wrote:

“On Wednesday 19 February, Brian ZS6YZ, Leon ZS6LMG and Johan ZS6DMX attended a training session with the USAR SA-01 team at the Centurion Fire Station. It was yet another rainy day and the team practised their rope skills indoors in the huge hanger where the fire trucks are stored.

“Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) are a dedicated and highly skilled and trained team of search and rescue specialists from various municipal and provincial fire and EMS stations in Gauteng. HAMNET has been selected to be their communications specialists and we were requested to attend the USAR training to meet the team and to get to understand how they work and what their communications challenges would be in the field. HAMNET’s primary and only role is to provide communications to the team, both internally within the team and in the field wherever they may be needed.

“This could include underground in caves or mine shafts, in the water or in the mountains. Communications could be needed between the team and their base as well as back to the Disaster Management Centres to which they report. This could include international deployments, as the USAR teams worldwide are all trained to the same international UN standards coordinated by The International Search and Rescue Advisory Group (INSARAG).

“HAMNET and USAR SA have already started with formalising an agreement between them.”

Thanks Brian, and best wishes for rapid progress between the groups.

Those of you, like me, whose curiosity is still piqued by what happened to Malaysian flight MH370, over 10 years ago, may be interested to know that the new search that has been started by a private underwater search and rescue company, is being reported on daily by a YouTube channel called “Airline News with Geoffrey Thomas”.

Some months ago, the amateur fraternity was split over some research done by a British Aerospace Engineer called Richard Godfrey, our own Dr Hannes Coetzee ZS6BZP, and Professor Simon Maskell, who published a lengthy paper called “The MH370 Case Study” describing how they had used perturbations in WSPR transmissions between Australia and Switzerland, to demonstrate a path for the metal aircraft that was MH-370 in the southerly direction it appeared to have taken that night. Their research showed that the search area previously studied did not include the likely resting place at the bottom of the ocean.

Naysayers in the amateur radio community thought it highly unlikely that you could prove anything with WSPR perturbations, but the organisers of the new search are taking all suggestions seriously, and the physics of unexpected fluctuations in weak signal propagation have encouraged the searchers to look at the possibilities created by the research.

Anyway, Geoffrey Thomas and Richard Godfrey co-host a daily 20 minute video, which has been going for the last 8 days or so, and can be easily found on YouTube, if you want to see what the ship called Armada 78 06 has done so far, and what its unmanned underwater robots have scanned. As of Friday night, nothing had come to light, when the ship returned to Freemantle for provisions and fuel. Most of the results of the deep sea scans (at 4600 metres below the surface, mind you) will only become available later as their scans of the ocean floor are analysed.

The search area is amongst some Tropical Cyclones, but the seas are reasonably manageable now, and the search will continue by the private company, on a no find, no fee basis.

When I wrote about Brian Jacobs ZS6YZ, higher up in this bulletin, I didn’t yet know he has been promoted to Top Brass in the HAMNET organisation. Grant Southey ZS6GS has stepped down, and his space taken by Brian, who has been very active in matters amateur radio, the field of beacons, and the work of HAMNET Gauteng. So Brian is no stranger to us, or to the responsibility he will carry, and I wish him well. Congratulations too, to Keith Howes, ZS5WFD, who assumes deputy national directorship in Brian’s footsteps. Keith already has a big reputation in HAMNET organizational skills.

I also thank Grant ZS6GS for the leadership roles he has played for at least 10 years, and wish him well in his retirement.

This is Dave Reece ZS1DFR reporting for HAMNET in South Africa.