[KCDXC] Wave of Destruction, Wave of Salvation

[Ken Kopp - KKØHF]

Ham Radio Operator on a Chance Visit to a Remote Indian Island Becomes a 
Lifeline

By Rama Lakshmi
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, January 2, 2005; Page D01

PORT BLAIR, India -- About one month ago, Bharathi Prasad and her team of 
six young ham radio operators landed in this remote island capital with a 
hobbyist's dream: Set up a station and establish a new world record for 
global ham radio contacts. In the world of ham slang, it was called a 
"Dxpedition."

"It is a big honor to come to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and operate. 
There is no ham activity here because it is considered a very sensitive 
area by the Indian government," said Prasad, a 46-year-old mother of two 
from New Delhi.

In fact, the last ham activity in these scattered islands in the Bay of 
Bengal, 900 miles east of the Indian mainland, occurred in 1987, when 
Prasad set up a station in Port Blair and made 15,500 calls. "I had always 
wanted to come back and break that record," she said.

This time, Prasad set up an antenna in her hotel and turned Room 501 into a 
radio station. She made more than 1,000 contacts every day and said she 
operated "almost all day and all night, with just three hours of sleep."

In the early hours of Dec. 26, while the other hotel guests were fast 
asleep, Prasad's room was crackling with the usual squawks and beeps. At 
6:29 a.m., she felt the first tremors of an earthquake. The tables in her 
room started shaking violently. She jumped up and shouted, "Tremors!" into 
her microphone. Then the radio went dead. She ran out and alerted the hotel 
staff and other guests.

But with that one word, she had alerted the world of radio hams, too.

Within a few hours, the extent of the damage was clear to everyone in Port 
Blair. But the tsunami had knocked out the power supply and telephone 
service of the entire archipelago of 500 islands, leaving the capital 
virtually cut off from the rest of India.

Undaunted, Prasad set up a temporary station on the hotel lawn with the 
help of a generator -- and put the city back on the ham radio map.

"I contacted Indian hams in other states and told them about what had 
happened. The whole world of radio hams were looking for us, because they 
had not heard from us after the tremors," she said later. "But I also knew 
this was going to be a big disaster. I immediately abandoned my expedition 
and told all radio operators to stop disturbing me. I was only on emergency 
communication from then on."

While news of the death and devastation caused by the tsunami in other 
parts of India was quickly transmitted around the world, the fate of the 
Andamans and Nicobars was slow to unfold.

Prasad kept broadcasting information about the situation to anyone who 
could hear her radio. Over and over, she repeated that there was no power, 
no water, no phone lines.

On Monday morning, she marched into the district commissioner's office and 
offered her services. "What is a ham?" he asked her. After she explained, 
he let her set up a radio station in his office, and a second one on Car 
Nicobar, the island hit hardest.

For the next two days, as the government grappled with the collapsed 
communication infrastructure, Prasad's ham call sign, VU2RBI, was the only 
link for thousands of Indians who were worried about their friends and 
families in the islands. She also became the hub for relief communications 
among officials.

"Survivors in Car Nicobar were communicating with their relatives in Port 
Blair through us," she said. When the phone lines were restored on Tuesday, 
Prasad's team in Car Nicobar radioed information about survivors to her 
team in Port Blair, whose members then called anxious relatives on the 
mainland to tell them that their loved ones were alive and well.

Prasad also helped 15 foreign tourists, including several from the United 
States, send news to their families. Offers of relief aid poured in from 
around the world through her radio, and she directed them to government 
officials. She also arranged for volunteer doctors to be sent from other 
Indian states.

Now she has become so popular in the islands, and in the ham world, that 
she said she has been affectionately nicknamed the "Teresa of the Bay of 
Bengal."

When the earthquake occurred, Prasad's worried husband called her from New 
Delhi and asked her to return home immediately.

"He reminded me that I have two children to look after back home," she 
said, laughing. "I told him that as a ham radio operator, I have a duty in 
times of disaster."

Under India's strict communications laws, a ham cannot leave home with his 
or her radio without going through an elaborate bureaucratic process to 
obtain permission from various ministries.

Prasad said that after her first expedition to Port Blair, she spent 17 
years begging and badgering officials before she was allowed to return.

Now she hopes her work in the aftermath of the tsunami will ease the path 
for other hams in India.

"She looked like a simple housewife when she checked in," recalled Ravi 
Singh, the hotel manager in Port Blair. "But now I marvel at the courage 
she has shown."



© 2005 The Washington Post Company