In South Africa, we still have the disaster watch in progress over KwaZulu Natal, with extreme temperatures and very dry conditions. EWN news says that dangerous fires are expected across large parts of the province today (Sunday).
And the never-ending wet weather in the western parts continues. Three retention dams burst their banks in a chain-reaction type disaster, in the Swartland area of the Western Cape this week, and a fourth dam’s wall is looking vulnerable as I write this. The communities of Dassenberg, Chatsworth and Riverlands have been flooded, roads and other amenities washed away, and large numbers of animals washed away or drowned.
The dailymaverick.co.za reported yesterday that 14 people were hospitalized, 444 are receiving humanitarian support and 224 people are being housed at a local church and a community centre. The Riverlands town is without potable water, and the Swartland and Drakenstein Municipality will temporarily provide water to the community until water supply is restored. Electricity infrastructure to the area has also been destroyed.
And it goes without saying that the humanitarian relief organisation Gift of the Givers, which was called by the Swartland Municipality and local disaster management team in the early hours of Thursday morning to provide assistance in evacuating people and supplying aid, is still on the site and will remain there for the next week.
The SPCA from the Cape of Good Hope and the Swartland has been active in the area, desperately looking for missing farm and domestic animals. With all animal feed washed away, and grazing areas covered in sludge, there is an immediate need to supply food for the remaining animals once recovered. Donations are gratefully received by the SPCA in these areas.
Reporting on Tropical Cyclone DEBBY, a category one hurricane which swept across Florida before turning to cross the Carolinas, the ARRL newsletter of 8th August says that the storm made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend area just after 11pm local time on 4th August.
The following day, it was downgraded to a tropical storm, with sustained winds of about 120km/h. The national Hurricane Centre’s ham station WX4NHC was activated, as were the Hurricane Watch Net and the VoIP Hurricane Net, as Debby deprived 248000 homes and business customers of electricity.
GDACS says that, after DEBBY’s passage, media reported six fatalities, five across the Big Bend region (northern Florida) and one more in southern Georgia. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) reported 294 people evacuated to 36 shelters and evacuation orders for 12 counties throughout Florida.
DEBBY was forecast to make its second landfall over the central coast of South Carolina (near to the area of the Charleston city) on 8 August very early in the morning (UTC), with maximum sustained winds up to 83 km/h and as a tropical storm. Very heavy rainfall, strong winds and storm surges were forecast over South and North Carolina, and the tropical storm warning issued by NOAA is still in force over most of this area.
Grace Chen, reporting from Malaysia in thestar.com, says that members of a local amateur ham radio society took part in a mass disaster communication simulation exercise to transmit messages across 30 hills and mountain peaks nationwide.
The event was organised by the Malaysian Amateur Radio Transmitters Society (Marts) that was set up in 1952.
Its president Mohd Aris Bernawi said the exercise was to establish the locations where two-way radio communication can be carried out in the event landlines, Internet and mobile phone communication has to be shut down due to large-scale disasters.
“The floods in Pahang and Selangor in 2014 and 2021, respectively, rendered landlines and other digital networks unusable due to the need to shut off electricity.
“Radio communication can also be useful when there are large-scale forest fires where electricity and communication cable lines are located,” said Aris.
Among peaks chosen for the exercise was the National Planetarium in Kuala Lumpur, using the call sign 9M2RPN.
Marts member Hamdan Abu, who coordinated the locations, chose the planetarium because it was located more than 150m above sea level.
“Height is not the only criterion. No buildings should interfere with transmissions,” he said.
Hamdan, who took three months to look at locations, said members had also spent another three weeks training for the final day of the simulation exercise.
Six Marts members set up a tent beside the planetarium entrance during the day-long exercise, using different frequency bands to simulate road closures, weather conditions and rescue efforts, which their counterparts stationed on other peaks, would then transmit and relay.
Siti Nusilah Hassan said that the act of relaying a message during the simulation drill required a certain level of precision to preserve clarity.
“We will state the number of words, and during transmission, either by voice or Morse code, we will read out even the punctuation marks.”
To ensure accuracy, the receiver of the message must confirm receiving the same number of words as stated, she added.
Siti Nusilah, a sales and marketing executive with a textile company, said she became a ham radio enthusiast in 2017 after reading a news article on how knowledge in two-way radio communication could become an asset during emergencies.
She was joined at the planetarium by army sergeant Taufiq Sanapi, safety executive Ahmad Husaini Marzuki, 4 school lab assistant Ramlah Mamat, and Mohd Albar Mohd Noor, an executive director of an event management company. (Certainly a varied set of backgrounds those volunteers came from)
Thanks to The Star for these excerpts from their report.
I note with excitement again, the Sunspot Number registered on Saturday morning, of 382, which, together with a Solar Flux Index of 306, is the highest I’ve ever known about. Unfortunately the numbers are never constant, and so an average figure for the week, as quoted by Hannes Coetzee in the HQ bulletin, is far more accurate, and likely to predict the propagation possibilities.
By the way, if you don’t already know of the website, consider having a look at www.solarham.com run by a Canadian ham, VE3EN, who puts together all the possible indices of solar weather on one page, with daily and sometimes hourly updates, as solar flares, coronal mass ejections, and geomagnetic storms change our communications patterns. There are also animations showing how CME’s affect the earth. Remember – a picture is worth a thousand words. That’s www.solarham.com.
Once again, from a very grey and drab and wet Western Cape, this is Dave Reece ZS1DFR reporting for HAMNET in South Africa.