The IARU Emergency Telecommunications Guide
The IARU emergency telecommunications guide was developed to provide materials suitable for training Radio Amateurs to participate in emergency events and guidance to the individual amateur radio operator who wants to improve their ability to participate in such events or to simply have a better understanding of the process.
Originally produced in English , Radio Amateurs around the world have worked hard to translate the 94 page document into their local languages. So far translations are available in the following languages;
Portuguese by Luiz Fernando Pesce PU2LXN
Spanish by EA1CI EA2BB EA3HUL EB3DGZ EA4GQB EA8AWK.
Romanian by Francisc Grünberg, YO4PX
and Slovak by Stanislav Uličiansky OM8ST
It is hoped that these translations will improve the knowledge of Radio Amateurs in Emergency Communications and hopefully this process will be repeated for other languages.
In Sweden a shorter introductory document for emergency communications has been produced and this is available here for information.
The IARU Emergency Operating Procedure
The guide deals with the organisation of emergency networks but in an emergency message passing needs to be quick and accurate, in fact we should always aim for 100% accuracy. However within Region 1 we speak many languages and because of the different risks in our own countries there are local differences in message formatting, this can cause problems for accurate and speedy message handling.
Since the 1980’s the IARU has had a HF Emergency Operating Procedures document to try and enable efficient message handling but individual Groups have, with justification developed and used local procedures to meet their own needs. However in an international context the benefits of having messages in a common format cannot be emphasised too much. Language barriers can be broken down and we can have more confidence that we are all handling the message consistently. The procedure is not as up-to-date as some Groups may wish, but across the region we have a great variation in skills and we need a procedure which we can use today if the need arises and then build on it and add improvements as the Region becomes familiar with its use.
The GlobalSET exercises have increased interest in International Emergency Communications using all modes and to support the objective of creating “practices for international emergency communication”, the IARU format will be used for future exercises. To help, the Procedure is being translated into a number of languages and links to the current versions are shown below.
If you have translations of this document into other languages, please let the IARU Region 1 Emergency Communications Co-Ordinator know.
Sample Forms
A sample message form for the IARU HF emergency operating procedure can be downloaded here (English).
For recording message traffic in the Global Simulated Emergency Tests, please use this spreadsheet (right click and ‘save as’ )- GlobalSETLogv2.xls (English) or this version in French.
An example of a completed log can be seen here — GlobalSETLogv2-example ( English ) or here in French.