Norway: Dagmar storm aftermath

[LA9XSA]

On the night of December 25th, western and central Norway, and northern Sweden, were hit by the winter storm Dagmar with winds and flooding equal to a cat 2 hurricane.
Many roads and railway lines were closed due to downed trees, ferries were closed, and over 100 000 people in Norway and 200 000 in northern Sweden lost power, but most still have phone and cell phone coverage. Some places the Home Guard (reserve military) have been called out to assist with damage assessment and power line inspection.
In some areas, broadcast radio also disappeared.

The worst communication emergency is in the municipality of Vågsøy, where there was no communications of any kind. Emergency services have a staging area at city hall, where inhabitants are asked to report to if they need help. The mayor is using the satellite phone of the line fishing boat MS Frøyanes to communicate with the outside world. Some simplex handsets are used to communicate with care homes.
The governor of Sogn og Fjordane county has asked the military to establish HF radio communications. Amateur radio emergency communications has also been activated and are in contact with the governors of the affected counties.

On 80 meters, the frequency of 3,715 MHz has been activated. On 160 meters, the frequency has not been decided yet, but one alternative is 1,902 MHz.
The NRRL emergency communication service is asking everyone to give way to emergency communications.
LE1AE is net control on 80 and 160.

The regional repeater LA5OR has been put in linked mode, and LE1AB is net control on that one.

[LA9XSA]

Post updated with amateur radio information

[LA9XSA]

During the day it became clear that many additional municipalities had full or partial communications blackouts. Repairs are continuing, somewhat hampered by high winds tonight as well.

Over a thousand people may have to be evacuated due to flooding and landslides.

As of writing, the amateurs are on standby. They have not yet received an official request from the governor or Rescue Coordination Center, but they are in touch with them, and have check-ins every three hours.
Amateurs in the affected area are welcome to check into the net, or get in touch with LA4PGA on phone 992 92 426 or 6707 1065.

[KD6KWZ]

I was going to ask how well those 2 frequencies worked in the day, but I also know the areas of Norway & Sweden north of the Arctic circle were in darkness at that time.

[LA9XSA]

The hardest hit areas are in the sub-arctic, so we have some sunlight still. It's like we're in the greyline constantly. Anyway, there are ragchews on 80 here during the day that I can hear from Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Russia.

Due to aurora effects etc. it's sometimes hard to get reliable communications in the far north arctic areas on HF, so linked repeaters is sometimes what's used there.

The emergency net activation was over after December 28th. There has been a couple of news reports with amateurs questioning why despite the activation no official traffic was passed by the amateurs. Perhaps it's got something to do with the districts further north being more used to relying on amateur communications, than the districts that had the communications emergency this time? Or maybe since the military and civil defense were also providing communications, all necessary traffic were handled by them?

The NRRL will make a report about the activation once data has been collected.