Agence France Presse

Port Blair, December 31

An Indian woman in the Andaman islands has become the centre of a multi-nation effort by ham operators to unite thousands of families separated by the killer waves. The Andamans account for about a third of India’s reported death toll of 11,330 but thousands more are missing or have been separated from families in the archipelago’s 572 islands.

A grateful Indian army is supporting 46-year-old Bharti Prasad with gear and batteries as the Delhi-based housewife has networked ham operators across the nations to reunite families and help in relief and rescue operations.

Ham radio buffs had not been permitted to operate in the Andamans since 1987 but the ban was lifted in November. Prasad was among the first to arrive to help establish a radio footrprint in the string of islands near Thailand. “We arrived here on December 15

to support Andamans as a radio country ... Amatuer stations across the world wanted a

footprint in these beautiful islands,” Prasad told AFP in the capital of Port Blair. Prasad said as her headset crackled with tsunami-related traffic from a high-frequency radio band spanning three megahertz to 30 megahertz.

“We have been flooded with messages which we relay on local telephone lines,” she said. “Hams have also advertised in newspapers asking people to get in touch with us,” added Prasad. “I thought I had lost my family but soon an official told me that he had received messages from a ‘radio station’ that all my relatives were safe in Port Blair,” said survivor Roby Dey in Car Nicobar. The “radio station” was none other than Prasad. Amateur stations in Kolkata, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai are now linked with Prasad and the network is growing beyond Indian territory.

“Bharti, we are now on airnet. You take care. You are the Angel of the Seas. Without you out there, rescue will halt,” a voice from Indonesia crackled in her hotel room.