The Radio Ama­teurs’ Emer­gency Net­work or RAYNET was acti­vat­ed dur­ing a recent flood threat, by the Ten­dring Dis­trict Coun­cil via the Essex Civ­il Pro­tec­tion and Emer­gency Man­age­ment Team.

RSGB Deputy Region­al Man­ag­er for Essex, Roland Tay­lor M0BDB reports that Essex RAYNET was pri­mar­i­ly assigned on Jan­u­ary 12 the Ten­dring Edu­ca­tion Cen­tre for res­i­dents of Jay­wick, and also at Fro­bish­er school to sup­port the evacuation.

Jay­wick in England’s south­east on the North Sea coast has the high­est risk of flood­ing in the coun­try, despite mit­i­ga­tion work by the local council.

RAYNET with a total of 16 oper­a­tors used a cross-band repeater for com­mu­ni­ca­tions back to the con­trol cen­tre at the local coun­cil for the police, fire and res­cue teams.

Mobile phone cov­er­age was not great, and the RAYNET team passed numer­ous impor­tant mes­sages to keep coun­cil offi­cials and vol­un­teers aware of events with­out tying up the phones.

Roland Tay­lor M0BDB report­ed that for­tu­nate­ly the mid­night tide surge was not as fore­cast and flood­ing remained man­age­able. RAYNET was then stood down, gath­ered up its portable gear and faced the win­try blast as its oper­a­tors head­ed home.

Roland M0BDB praised sev­er­al neigh­bour­ing RAYNET groups who offered resources includ­ing Mid Herts, South West Herts, Suf­folk and Med­way. Fur­ther evi­dence of pre­pared­ness by RAYNET ready with emer­gency com­mu­ni­ca­tions to cov­er any poten­tial­ly seri­ous incident.

– Jim Lin­ton VK3PC, Chair­man IARU Region 3 Dis­as­ter Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Committee.