50th anniversary of the Florence Flood Award

An Award to commemorate the Arno River Flood on November 1966 and the role of Hams in emergency communications.

2022

The ARI Comitato Regionale Toscana, celebrates the 50 Years from the Flood of 4th November 1966 with a special callsing II5ALL and with a large number of tuscan ham radio stations active on all bands.

The event want to commemorate the tragic Flood of the Arno river that killed 101 people and damaged or destroyed millions of masterpieces of art and rare books.

The event should also be remembered by hams as one of the very first Amateur Radio Emergency Network setup spontaneously, to help and support authorities on coordinating helps to the citizens.

The Role of Florentine Radio Amateurs in 1966

It is, perhaps, not generally known that the Radio Amateurs helped the local authorities during the Arno Flood.

At 3 AM in the morning a Florentine Amateur Radio Operator, I1CLC Carlo Luigi Ciapetti (now I5CLC) was waked up by a phone call from a friend living in the center of Florence, seeking help because there was water everywhere. Carlo turned on his radio and contacted some other local hams.

Communications in the city where completely out of services, Police, Firefighters, Municipality, Hospitals where isolated. Only hams where capable to communicate locally and with the rest of the world.

In a few hours I1CLC, commissioned by local authorities, setup an emergency communication network, picking up Hams from their homes, and setting up stations in all the strategic places of the city, like Piazza Duomo, Comune di Firenze, Local Police, Firefighters, Stadium, Hospital  and even with the usage of the first officially authorized Mobile Ham Radio Station, supported the coordination of help to the citizens.

A regional and national network was setup in the same hours, to support the communication nation-wide allowing the delivery of power generators, medicines, food and beverage. This was made possible thanks to Hams from Pistoia, Sanremo, Bologna and Milan.

 

Note: All Callsigns in 1966 where assigned as zone 1, only few years later were converted to zone 5, so I1CLC become I5CLC.

AWARD RULES

Participation: Open to all OM and SWL.
Period: From 00:00 UTC on 29 October 2016 at 23:59 UTC on November 6, 2016.
Bands:  All HF amateur bands allowed: 160-80-40-20-15-10 meters (excluding warc, QSO via repeaters are not allowed).
Modes: SSB – CW – ALL DIGITAL MODES on respect of Band Plan.

Valid Contacts

II5ALL Special event Station
IQ5 Club stations belonging to ARI Clubs of localities that was affected by the flood on November 4, 1966 which are included in the following list: Firenze IQ5FI – Empoli IQ5EM – Grosseto IQ5GR – Pisa IQ5PJ – Pontassieve IQ5HC – Pontedera IQ5DY – Santa Maria a Monte IQ5QD – Scandicci IQ5BL – Versilia IQ5VR – Vinci IQ5LV
Hams ACTIVATORS (I5 IK5 IW5 IZ5 IU5) stations belonging to ARI: Empoli, Firenze, Grosseto, Pisa, Pontassieve, Pontedera, Santa Maria a Monte, Scandicci, Versilia, Vinci

Each station can be contacted more times throughout the duration of the diploma but only once a day (regardless of the emission mode).

Scoring:

  • contact with the special call II5ALL is worth 25 points;
  • contact with one with the clubstation (IQ stations) participating sections Diploma is worth 10 points;
  • contact with the stations of the OM “Activators” belonging to ARI sections participants is worth 5 points.

The total score will be the sum of the points from valid qso.

On-line Log

Logs must be uploaded by the participants on the appropriate online log system at www.arifirenze.it/ii5all , to be registered to the online log, you must sent a request via e-mail at diploma_alluvione @ arifirenze.it containing the following information: CALL,CATEGORY NAME OPERATOR.

You will automatically receive via e-mail, credentials to access the system.

Deadline for the log upload is December 16, 2016.

Award request:

To be eligible for the award you will need:

  • 100 points for Italians OM
  • 50 points for European OM;
  • 50 points for the non-European OM.

For SWL are applied the same rules of OM

The personalized diploma for each participant will be available on the website in electronic form (PDF) and can be downloaded for free; for those who want paper award the contribution is 10 Euro or $ 15 to cover expenses to be paid by bank transfer or PayPal account, following instructions will be given on the official website: http://www.arifirenze.it/alluvione
Categories:

Category “A” – Italian OM;
Category “B” – European OM;
Category “C” – outside Europe OM;

Prizes will be awarded with plaque 1st place in each category.

 

A rare video taken during the flood.

Links

Previous articleBest links of the week 40 2016
Next articleBefore Mars
The DXZone merges amateur radio and Internet, since early internet days. Established in 1996 as a radio-related-mailinglist, has registered its domain name in 1998. Main goal is to review and promote ham-radio web sites, classifying them in categories. The DXZone is managed by ham radio operators with ham radio operators in mind.

Leave your Comment

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here