Mon­soon rains in India, Nepal, Pak­istan, and Bangladesh over the past month has accord­ing to the UN affect­ed 41 mil­lion peo­ple, and left an esti­mat­ed 1,200 dead. 

The lat­est on the sub­con­ti­nent was on Tues­day August 29 when the rain, the worst in decades, flood­ed the Mum­bai and Pune areas with imme­di­ate action by local HAMS help­ing out dur­ing the adverse weather. 

All traf­fic was dis­rupt­ed, even local trains and bus­es were sub­merged and unable to move. Chil­dren strand­ed in a school were left hun­gry and the elec­tric­i­ty also went off. 

Satish Shah VU2SVS and Ankur Puranik VU2AXN and 50 HAMS involved arrang­ing food and pow­er for the school. 

The HAMs of Mum­bai were in touch with each oth­er, even those who don’t have a VHF trans­ceiv­er. The ‘ZELLO app’ was used to con­nect those with­out suit­able radio equip­ment to inter­face with a VHF HAM radio frequency. 

Many work­ers were strand­ed in their offices or at rail­way sta­tions until mid­night. Look­ing after the cen­tral rail­way in Mum­bai were the Bharat Scouts & Guides that had under­gone pre­vi­ous dis­as­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion training. 

The recent rain is like­ly to remain for a while, with schools and offices closed. All the HAMs are kept on alert by gov­ern­ment and local bod­ies should their com­mu­ni­ca­tions be needed. 

Ear­li­er the east­ern side of India was inun­dat­ed by mon­soon rain with the major affect­ed area being most of the Bihar state villages.

Nation­al Coor­di­na­tor for Dis­as­ter Com­mu­ni­ca­tion in India, Jayu S. Bhide VU2JAU, report­ed that radio ama­teurs from East Ben­gal and Pat­na were in action pass­ing mes­sages dur­ing the flooding. 

– Jim Lin­ton VK3PC, Chair­man IARU Region 3 Dis­as­ter Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mit­tee with Jayu S. Bhide VU2JAU Nation­al Coor­di­na­tor for Dis­as­ter Com­mu­ni­ca­tion in India