ARLA/CLUSTER: Radioamadores indianos auxiliam vitimas de acidente no Rio Ganges

[João Costa > CT1FBF]

Hams operate from Ganges River accident scene in Kolkata

The holy river Ganga flows through the state of West Bengal covering a few
districts like North 24 Parganas, Hooghly, Howrah and few more.
On Wednesday, 26th April , 2017 something really unfortunate had happened
in this route ferrying passengers from one side of the river to the other,
where the one side is Shyamnagar (North 24 Parganas) and the other side is
Bhadreswar  (Hooghly) , which is commonly known as the Telinipara ghat.
This is a very busy ghat ferrying thousands of people per day in motorised
country boats, as this is the only mode of transport for people travelling
across the river.

At around 11.00 in the morning yesterday, during the busy hours of office
goers and school children and businessman the mishap had happened.
A jetty crowded with more than 150 commuters collapsed in the river in the
Telinipara ghat in Bhadreswar leaving all into the water, where some could
swim and some couldn’t.  Among them were school children, old men and women
and servicemen. The scene was devastating and impossible to be seen with
eyes. Cries and shouts were there all over the place. As there was high
tide, as soon as the jetty collapsed into the water of the river ganga,
people who fell into it and were driven by the enormous currents of the
river within a few minutes.

Local people dived in to the river to save a few lives and also the local
fisherman took their boats and rescued  25 of them. As of now, 4 have died
and 17 have been admitted to hospital and the rest are missing. As soon as
we heard of this accident, we the members of the West Bengal Radio Club
jumped into action with our hand held radios and Echolink. Some hams from
our club living nearby the accident spot rushed to the spot within minutes
of disaster namely Souvik Ch. Dutta (VU3YSC), Sufal Mazumdar (VU3ZSM),
Gourav Sadhukhan (VU3YGS), Somnath  Adhikary (VU3 ZSA ), Sourav Sadhukhan
(VU3ZHU ), Abhrajit Das (VU3YDA) and Sourav Goswami (SWL). They were all
having local QSOs among them with those 2 M hand held radios and making
distant QSO to our club station(25 kilometers on Air distance) with an
emergency  station  setup where they used external antennas to  communicate
with our club station (VU2MQT).

Handling our club station was Rinku Nag Biswas (VU2JFB) where she commanded
excellently to yield results. Also, other members who were far from the
accident zone maintained liaison with members from ground zero via
Echolink. In Echolink we were using a Southern California, USA Repeater
(KM6EON-R) with prior notice from Mr. Greg (KI6GIG), the custodian of the
repeater. We are thankful to him and members of his club that they were
with us during the disaster and helped us by giving us the permission to
access the repeater.

Using Echolink were Abhrajit Das (VU3YDA) from ground zero,  Ambarish Nag
Biswas (VU2JFA) from his office in Barasat which is approximately 20 kms
from accident  zone,  Jayanta Baidya (VU3YJB) from Bolpur which is 170 km
from accident zone,  myself Chandramouli  Datta (VU3ZHJ) from my
college  in South Calcutta which is 60 kms form accident zone , Suman
Saurabh (VU3ZHD) from his house in Dumka which is more than 300 km from
accident zone and Soubrata De (VU3YGE) from this office in South Kolkata
which is 70 kms from accident zone.

Members of West Bengal Radio Club did a wonderful job by providing the
communication and helping those men in danger. We are proud as like this we
are always prepared for any kind of disaster if any in the future to help
the people as much as we can. Also not to forget the importance of the mock
drills that we attended with the National Disaster Response Force , State
Government officials, Civil Defence, Army and other forces as to how to
work hand in hand during any disaster.

The present report is that the NDRF, under the guidance  of Dy.
Commandant  Mr. Abhay Kr. Singh(IPS) , is using its deep sea divers to
locate dead bodies and the search is on from last night and the police have
arrested four people relating to this incident . Condolences to the friends
and families of those men from the West Bengal Radio Club.

*Chandramouli Datta VU3ZHJ*
-------------- próxima parte ----------
Um anexo em HTML foi limpo...
URL: http://radio-amador.net/pipermail/cluster/attachments/20170428/8c97d9ee/attachment.html