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Communications Infrastructure No Match for Katrina
jfourier writes "In this age of cheap commoditized consumer electronics and advanced mobile technology, why can't all the people of a city make contact during an emergency? Cell phone circuits filled up during 9/11 attacks and in the wake of hurricane Katrina very few victims can make contact with their families, despite the fact that they have all those mobile phones. The Red Cross is looking to deploy satellite equipment to restore communications in affected areas." From the article: "Katrina made landfall in Louisiana early this morning with sustained winds of 145 mph, but veered just enough to the east to spare New Orleans a direct blow. Even so, flooding, power outages and heavy damage to structures were reported throughout the region.
The Red Cross tomorrow expects to begin deploying a host of systems it will need, including satellite telephones, portable satellite dishes, specially equipped communications trucks, high- and low-band radio systems, and generator-powered wireless computer networks, said Jason Wiltrout, a Red Cross network engineer. "
Do I even need to say it?
Ever since the midwest blackout I've been meaning to get an operator's license... for 2m if nothing else.
Beat out messages on drums!
Of course the system failed. The cities have flooded, there is no power in much of the area, and a good number of towers and other infrastructure has been damaged.
The winds reached 140+ miles per hour. The uplands received 5+ inches of rain in 24 hours.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
In this age of cheap commoditized consumer electronics and advanced mobile technology, why can't all the people of a city make contact during an emergency?
That is the dumbest question I have ever seen on Slashdot.
Sure, cell PHONES are cheap, but have you priced the towers and the infrastructure that SUPPORTS the phone? Plus, even though your cell phone has a battery, the batteries at the cellular provider won't last long when the entire frickin' CITY is without power.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
WTF do people expect? Millions of people displaced and each having at least one relative and likely several in other parts of the world trying to reach them. This is to be expected. Why should a network outage and phone difficulties be news in such a catastrophy?
I live in Charlotte, NC, and it's often difficult to place a cell phone call during rush hour traffic here. If we had a major disaster, no doubt the same thing would happen to us. The cell phone networks obviously were only designed to support a small fraction of the total number of cell phone users in the area at any given time.
While it might be somewhat impracticable to put blimps up over major cities for cell coverage all the time, the use of this technology for emergancies isn't such a bad idea.
Unfortunately, there are really two issues here. First, the ability to communicate during the disater. I'm not sure if we really need to invest too much in the problem of how to make a cell phone call during a hurricane. Evacuation is done for a reason. If you can't be bothered to leave I'm not all to sympathetic if you can't call out either.
That said, when rescue crews start operating in the city following a catastrophe like this, we need to have a working telecommunications infrastructure. Blimps or some other form of airborn system can aid immeasurably in this.
Of course, cell phones are only good as long as their batteries hold out. Still, solar power and a decent sat uplink can temporarily solve the infrastructure problem.
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
Technology can certainly help us in times of need. The Mayor of New Orleans was able to order an evacuation, through the great telecommunication and media infrastructures that we have, people were able to be warned, which probably saved thousands of lives. I say this, because when natural disasters like this hit third world countries, there are many, many, many more deaths. So our communications infrastructure and other technologies DO HELP. Of course, we have had television and radio and the like for a while, an evacuation and warning like this would have been possible probably even 40 years ago. This catagory of technology would also include things like interstate highways, helicopters, boats, and the like, which help rescue operations get where they are needed. Another development we have that helps is a highly organized and functional government. George Bush can immediately grant disaster funding to these states and the rescue operations get moving. Without government direction and organization, it would take whatever volunteer goodwill organizations that go down there a lot longer to coordinate their efforts, and would be much less effective. It is true that the cell phones stop working when the power is cut to the tower, but the same is true for regular phones. But, the amazing thing is, to restore phone service we can fly a couple satellites, which is a lot easier than waiting for the water to recede and rebuild all the phone lines. So technology is helping in this case as well. A disaster like this does show us how powerful nature is, and that sometimes there is nothing we can do to stop a disaster, but we can do our best to minimize the tragedy.
and why I prefer the northeast. 0 serious earthquakes, 0 landslides, 0 hurricanes, 0 tornados (mostly anyway)
There just aren't much of any natural phenomenon that you can't adequately prepare for in advance up there.
Sadly I'm in DC these days...the home of some the most obscene unnatural disasters, our very own House and Senate...ugh
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
That's assuming that you're IP provider still has active data connections, the wind hasn't knocked over the cables you're relying on, and any number of things. I swear, a lot of you need to go to one RACES meeting and realize what emergency communications is really like. You can't rely on the base infrastructure to be in place below you in an emergency.
a dry place to sleep is the real need. Which is why bringing in communications equipment is a good idea. The sooner that victims can arange to be somewhere other than a shelter (by calling family, finding out of town shelters, etc.), the sooner you will have an extra bed for someone who doesn't have that option. Maybe now that the power is down, all that broadband-over-power-lines will be down so the ham radio operators can help with the truly urgent info. Well, not to flame, but if you had a child that had just moved into the dorm at UNO, and you didn't know if they were alive or not, your definition of "urgent info" might change a bit. This is not an either/or circumstance, bringing in a satalite phone or 2 is not going to cause the survivors to start keeling over. I am sure if it were the choice between a life and a phone, the red cross would choose the life.
RF isn't a great answer for EVERYONE to chat up with their friends and family.
..... That traffic is secondary to priority and emergency traffic for the served agencies (FEMA, Red Cross, Salvation Army, etc), until the land line and other services are restored.
However, RF - as implimented by Amateur Radio Emergency Services (ARES) and the National Traffic System (NTS) can provide health and welfare traffic ie. I'm alive in 'selter location' with
73 (best regards).
Peter AI6PG
During this disaster Amateur radio operators (almost always the first communications up and running) have been of significant assistence.
:-/
BPL will make amateur radio effectivly unusable if it is implemented widely.
But but but... I hear you saying... BPL won't be creating interference when the power is down!
What people forget is that amateur radio operators use thier radios between disasters, including practice disaster scenarios.
If BPL becomes widespread then they (we) will be significantly disadvantaged and it will start driving amateurs away from this hobby (this hobby which has so many community benifits).
This can already be seen with the restrictions on antennas (covenants etc) that are becomming more and more common.
If this trend continues we might not be there next time we are needed
I'm gonna be blunt, and people can mod it flamebait if they like, but the fact that people live on a flood plain that has sunk because groundwater has been pumped out on a coastline that gets hammered with multiple hurricanes a year, with REALLY BIG F**KING ONES every century or so ought to be a hint that maybe this isn't the best place to have a city. Now maybe before the next near-hit happens, we'll have the technology to build uber-levees and dams, but one has to ask oneself, isn't it cheaper to relocate the city and say "Wow, those bloody Frenchmen were pretty goddamn stupid."
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
And of course if you have BPL active in your city 99.9% of the time, making the HF bands useless, how many hams would go to the trouble of obtaining and maintaining HF equipment for that 0.1% of the time it actually works? A rig may work after being in storage for a few years, but the batteries probably won't, and the antenna may or may not.
Fortunately, BPL has not been rolled out universally, so the HF bands are still useful for most. For now.
DE AD5RH
Instead of trying to retain full voice, wouldn't it be better to just limit none essential mobiles to text? Then the system could survive on far fewer base stations, but retain some communications for all. You can surely get many more text messages through the network than voice.
Be as blunt as you want, and grab a map while you're at it. Holland is below sea level. Bad place for a country. Some cities in Italy are below sea level. Stupid Italians. How many times have we heard about parts of India getting flooded (usually the poorest parts). Stupid citizens. The fact is that a lot of cities and towns are either below sea level, or in flood plains (Mississippi). While were doing "stupid". How about those places were people live next to a volcano? Or right over a fault line? Stupid humans. Anyone remember "Love Canal"? Stupid humans living on top of that.
--
The "are you a script" word for today is floods.
it may have happened, OTOH, in any great disaster strike, many 'fantastic' tales get circulated that turn out to not be true.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
But not to you, Mr. Asshole. To you, its THEIR fault this happened. Its my grandmothers fault that her house is under water right now (which is why I am so mad at your heartless comment). I mean 40 years ago she COULD have bought it somewhere else, except for the fact that my grandfather's job was in New Orleans and they didn't have the means to live else where. But no, you are right, its her fault.
This shit makes me sooo mad. And to see such cold tripe modded up....sad day...
Open Source Sushi
Back in the late seventies and early eighties, Gerard K. O'Neill, famous for the development of the idea of orbital space habitats, made the rounds of the government and corporate powers to strongly propose the idea of the satellite phone. He wanted to have a profit-making reason to go into space to realize his dreams.
The prototype phone he showed around was about the size of a cellular handset you could buy today.
O'Neill's project never made it out of the gate. Too expensive for a private company to make, and we are all about private companies.
Bill Gates famously put some of his cash into a six billion dollar venture called Iridium which actually still functions. At least, unless they've deorbitted due to budget woes. They went bankrupt, and the US government picked it up for pennies on the dollar. That's one way of getting a cheap satphone system.
America and the rest of the planet went a different route, for purely business reasons. It was more profitable to roll out cellular coverage in stages, as customers could be found to pay the bills. They make fabulous amounts of money.
But as we see today in New Orleans, although cell phones passed the money test, they've utterly failed to support their users. People are dying out there because the cheap, easy-to-build cell towers are powerless and flooded.
Sometimes, and I can't see how much more forcefully a point can be made than an entire region falling out of communication, engineering for critical infrastructure should NOT BE LEFT SOLEY TO THE FREE MARKET.
The military is flying in satphones so that rescuers and cops can finally talk to each other.
Iridium, or a successor should be government subsidized, expanded, and maintained as a national security asset. Screw the cell phone companies. Screw the billionaires. Make a national phone company, like the post office. Let it operate independently, for profit, but chartered to provide service for all, from the satellites in the sky, at subidized prices. Priority for disasters. We need this. It is not an optional extra for civilization.
I know someone who can't rest because a relative was driving north on I-10 and hasn't been heard from in over two days. He should be able to phone. A prison has rioted, and no one can get through to find out what's going on.
If we can spend a trillion- yes, after it is over, a trillion will be spent-- on this war in Iraq, we can spend a few measly billion dollars a year in perpetuity to make sure this infrastructure failure never happpens again.
Libertarians, this one's for you. A lesson in humility and sanity. Government is sometimes the only solution.