Re: Christchurch New Zealand

[Mark Foster <blakjak () blakjak net>]

I'm glad someone said something nice about Radio Hams on this thread 
(which started as being about Christchurch!) or i'd have risked polluting 
Christchurch's good rep with all this noise about whackers!

FWIW AREC (NZ's ARES equivalent) are active in Christchurch, mainly on 
VHF, though there's been a little activity on HF as well as I gather. I'm 
too far away (or too poorly equipped) to verify those reports.

For the most part though the major Telcos are succeeding on providing 
sufficient resources to limp things along.  Hundreds of Generators are 
operating to provide cover for critical comms infrastructure (when not 
being stolen!).

Back in September I blogged about the NZ Fire Service's new HAZMAT-Command 
vehicles and how they had proven their worth. During that quake they had 
~1-2 operational.

http://www.blakjak.net/node/1380
(photos etc)

This is outside the main Christchurch Fire Station where one is currently 
operating as Command Unit, taken Yesterday:

http://www.aucklandfirepolice.org.nz/images/christchurch/5.jpg

NZ recently fielded 17 of those trucks, I gather there's ~5 of them 
deployed in Christchurch now, plus at least a couple of the 
previous-generation command units they replaced.  They're equipped with 
Cellular, Satcom and Radio.

> From what i've seen connectivity is still available for the majority of 
Christchurch based ISP's and major networks - assuming their building's 
are still servicable. NZNOG is currently collating offers of assistance 
from the local NOG community, and there's some wider stuff going on:


http://www.nznog.org/?page_id=31

http://www.geekzone.co.nz/freitasm/7561

http://business.eq.org.nz/

As usual, if you filter through the crims, scammers and others who would 
take advantage of such a situation, there's plenty of good people doing 
their bit to assist.

I for one was very grateful to see so much international assistance 
popping up promptly too.

Mark
ZL1VMF
Auckland, NZ


On Thu, 24 Feb 2011, Owen DeLong wrote:

> FWIW, in my experience, when ARES and RACES both arrive on a scene
> together, they rarely get into small arms fire over any thing, rather, preferring
> to work together to help each other set up both repeaters and to coordinate
> which parts of the workload will be handled by which operation in order to
> maximize the efficiency with which the job gets done.
>
> Perhaps this is unique to California (yeah, I know we're known as the
> land of Granola out there), or, perhaps as I perceive, hams world wide
> tend to be community-minded decent folks trying to help.
>
> Owen
> KB6MER
>
> On Feb 24, 2011, at 2:23 PM, Mike Lyon wrote:
>
> > The old pin--through-the-center-of-the coax trick while you go on setting up
> > your repeater? :)
> >
> > 73's,
> > Mike
> > KE6MRE

*snip*