Monday 21 January 2013

HAMNET weekly report 20 January 2013


On Thursday, the South African Weather Bureau, SAWS, issued a warning to Disaster Risk Management in various Eastern Provinces of the possibility of heavy rain in their areas.

By Saturday evening, many of those predictions materialised and the Kruger national park again was experiencing flooding.

On Saturday afternoon, Hamnet issued a warning to a few of its members in key areas to be on standby for possible emergency communication and on Saturday evening, Piet Badenhorst, ZS6G from Nelspruit sent us an advisory to stay clear of the Park or to phone ahead if you had an intention to visit the Park.

He sent us a list of roads and bridges within the Park that had already been closed and photographs were also appearing on Facebook of flooded roads and rivers within the Kruger.

By Saturday evening, we also received a shot of a helicopter that had been airlifted to rescue some tourists stranded in a remote area who were flown to safety.

At the time of compiling this report, early this morning to get the latest news from that area, no further reports have been received. However, it was decided with Gert Botha, ZS6GC, that we will monitor both 10,125 MHz and 7,110 MHz during the day for any communication from the area.

The Weather Bureau has indicated that rain will continue in the area today but that it should start to clear by tomorrow.

Meanwhile, adverse weather has also caused havoc in Europe with heavy snowfalls in areas and also disrupting air traffic from Heathrow airport where more than a hundred flights have been cancelled due to icy runways.

And on the other side of the world, runaway fires in Australia has now caused the death of one person and is still burning out of control; in some areas



Reporting for Hamnet, this is Francois Botha, ZS6BUU.

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