With the recent weather event, Hurricane Irene, that rampaged along the Atlantic coast, I am reminded of lessons I learned in my past: Mobility has played a role in almost every disaster or event response since we stood up the first cellular network in Los Angeles for the ’84 Olympics.
I have an extensive background in the public safety communications space. I can count among the many life experiences that I have had (being a volunteer fireman and creating an emergency response team for a cellular carrier in Southern California) as having one thing in common – when it comes to responding to events, natural or man-made, communications is key. And mobile communications is the lifeline least affected by these events.
Don’t get me wrong, I know that cellular congestion immediately following an event leads to most folks getting denied service or dropping calls. It’s a function of the numbers. There is no way to design a phone system that can accommodate a 2000 percent increase in peak user traffic in any given minute. I suppose you could do it in theory, but those companies would go out of business due to the imbalance between available capacity and actual need. Capacity isn’t free and the balance is what determines your profit or loss.
I ran the response team for the Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles in 1994 for the carrier I worked for. The previous major FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) event was Hurricane Andrew in Florida and FEMA was under-impressed with cellular capabilities in general based on the Andrew experience. Andrew was a hurricane that wreaked havoc on central Florida, and did so on a scale that was difficult for most folks to imagine. As an example, a cell site building four miles inland had to have the steel door removed with a cutting torch because six feet of seawater filled the building and the pressure on the door made it impossible to open conventionally. Andrew literally stripped everything off the surface of the land that it touched – down to the dirt – and left nothing intact in its wake. Not buildings, vehicles or infrastructure. Northridge, while devastating to a large area, was not as damaging to the infrastructure as a hurricane, so response and recovery was much faster and easier.
With the recent bout of weather, it’s easy to look askance at the various cellular carriers and wonder why you couldn’t get your call through to grandma to let her know you were all right. It’s a natural feeling to be frustrated when you can’t communicate. The challenge of communications for the first responders is much more pressing in most cases and has heavier consequences when it fails.
With just about everybody using a mobile device these days, the time to minimize your usage is immediately following a disaster. Leave the lines clear for the folks who really have a life or death issue on their hands. Don’t jump on the Internet and start cruising for fun when network congestion is jeopardizing response teams’ ability to do their job, get to the people who need their help, or request assistance from outside agencies or states. Consider your fellow man, woman or child and how you would feel if you were in a situation that required assistance but couldn’t summon it.
I’m not here to lecture anyone but every time I see people on TV complaining that they couldn’t call their sister in some other state to tell her about their crazy car ride home (after the hurricane) while they are standing in front of a pile of rubble that used to be their neighbors home, it makes me pause.
At Mobile Masters, our thoughts and prayers go out to the folks that have been dealt a terrible hand by the recent storm. Irene may be gone but the flooding and damage is far from over. Let’s all think about our friends and neighbors and focus on the greater good, just this one time.
Tags: Brian Philbin, Mobility - General
