Floridians are urged to prepare an emergency communications plan for the 2008 hurricane season which begins in June. Verizon Wireless offers these tips:
- Keep wireless phone batteries fully charged – in case local power is lost – well before warnings are issued.
- Have additional charged batteries and car-charger adapters available for back-up power.
- Keep phones, batteries, chargers and other equipment in a dry, accessible location.
- Maintain a list of emergency phone numbers – police, fire, and rescue agencies; power companies; insurance providers; family, friends and co-workers; etc. – and program them into your phone.
- Distribute wireless phone numbers to family members and friends.
- Forward your home phone calls to your wireless number if you will be away from your home or have to evacuate.
The company also urges the following actions once a storm is on the way:
- Limit non-emergency calls to conserve battery power and free-up wireless networks for emergency agencies and operations.
- Send brief TXT messages rather than voice calls for the same reasons as above.
- Check weather and news reports available on wireless phone applications when power is out.
In the 12 months since the start of the 2007 Hurricane Season, Verizon says it has spent more than $150 million in Florida to strengthen and enhance its wireless network by expanding and enhancing regional switching facilities, erecting new digital cell sites with on-site back-up power, expanding EV-DO Rev A statewide and completing a Disaster Response Trailer.
The company also has a fleet of dozens of Cells on Wheels (COWS) and Cells on Light Trucks (COLTS), and generators on trailers (GOaTS) that can be rolled into hard-hit locations or areas that need extra network capacity.
Both COWs and COLTs are full-blown macrocell sites. Each COW can provide up to 200 available voice channels. Each COLT can provide 40.
COWs consist of a 8-foot by 20-foot trailer with an equipment building mounted on top that houses the cell site equipment. The transmission tower is a 62-foot-high telescopic pole.
COLTs are roamers-small, portable trucks with 14-foot covered beds. They feature telescopic transmission towers that rise as high as 62 feet. Once the COWs and COLTs are in place, the carrier connects a T-1 line and a power source and integrates the site into the RF environment.
COWs may stay in place longer, while COLTs will likely be transported from venue to venue as demand dictates.
AT&T ran a disaster simulation in Chicago recently (above), and invited Engadget to their site to check out how they practice dealing with total network failures in times of disasters.
On September 11, 2001, AT&T activated their Network Disaster Recovery Team for its first full-scale disaster response. The team and the recovery equipment arrived in northern New Jersey early on September 12. The recovery equipment was positioned and turned up to receive service forty-eight hours later.
Dailywireless has more on emergency communications and public service communications.
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