Wireless Institute Civil Emergency Network

BUNDABERG

“Professional Volunteer Communicators linking the Community in time of need.”

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Queensland WICEN has been around for a very long time and prior to the creation of the State Emergency Services, it was Amateur Radio Operators who formed a large percentage of the Civil Defence Signals Section.

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training

Today our members still volunteer their time so that they can be of service to the community during times of natural disaster or emergency.

Often when an emergency occurs normal communications such as telephones, mobile phone towers & the internet can be destroyed or networks become so congested that they fail. When that happens radios, powered by 12volt batteries, are often the only form of communication until normal services can be restored.

WICEN Bundaberg is sponsored by the Bundaberg Amateur Radio Club which an affiliate of the Wireless Institute of Australia and both WICEN and the Club are supported by the Bundaberg Regional Council. Our radio operators are registered with SES and the Club is proud to have 11 club members actively serving as volunteers.

Our aim is to be prepared so that if we should be activated as part of the Bundaberg Regional Council Disaster Management Plan we can place trained radio operators into any situation to assist those welfare agencies working within the plan.

WICEN operators are not expected to be the rescue or emergency response personnel but we may find ourselves forwarding radio messages between Emergency Operations Centres, Welfare Centres, SES and Red Cross for example.

Our primary role is to meet the welfare needs of our own local residents and by simply using our communications expertise passing messages we can assist these volunteer agencies caught up in an emergency.

With a full calendar of training in radio operations and message handling we sit quietly behind the highly trained SES personnel and those other welfare agencies who undertake the emergency and life saving work.

During the Victorian bushfire crisis in early 2009 Amateur Radio operators were activated as part of the Victorian emergency plan and served for many weeks in the disaster area.

This is a link to the WIA news item on the bushfires and the WICEN response.

Further Links:

A 2007 field exercise in Bundaberg it was fun but the training had an element of real life field and map reading work.

Queensland Government - EMQ communications information.

[Photographic Collage ' WICEN Training 24 october 2009' courtesy of Bob, VK4UD]