Geoff Feiss - September 07, 2005
Montana Telecommunications Association
Hurricane Katrina
MTA Commentary—September 7, 2005
Hurricane Katrina
We Americans are always looking for ways to do things better, quicker, cheaper, more effectively, and so on. That’s our character, and it helps make this country the world economic powerhouse that it is.
So while we search our records and our souls for what we could have or should have done better and more effectively to prepare for, and then respond to the horrendous aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, let’s also keep in mind the magnitude of this epic event, and how gargantuan the American response to it has been.
On one level, we’re trying to understand the human and social consequences of Katrina. On yet another level, the economic consequences are just beginning to be realized.
By looking just at the telecommunications industry, we can get a sense of the scale of this catastrophe. Before Katrina hit the Gulf States, the storm had already passed over Florida where telephone service had been temporarily knocked out and restored to over 350,000 customers. Telephone companies don’t like it, to put it mildly, when service is interrupted. They bury as much infrastructure as possible. They have emergency batteries that power your phones at home and the entire network when electricity goes down. And they have emergency back up generators that kick in when the batteries fail. So normally, service does not go down, and when it does, it is restored in short order.
Meanwhile, more than 500 emergency generators had been distributed to staging areas in Alabama and Louisiana, with nearly 250,000 gallons of fuel standing by. Large scale preparations were in place for a huge event.
By Wednesday, however, it was apparent that “huge” wasn’t nearly the size of the damage. The levees in New Orleans had broken and water was still rising. BellSouth, the largest landline telecommunications provider in the region estimated that about 1.75 million customers were affected by the storm—more than three times the number of customers in the entire state of Montana. In a gross understatement, BellSouth’s chief technology officer said, “This is not a normal hurricane restoration situation.” Wireless service was affected too, as power failures were widespread and water damage knocked out even emergency back-up generators. To make matters worse, repair crews couldn’t reach their facilities. Nonetheless, companies set up free calling centers as fast as they could at shelters throughout the region where service was available.
By Thursday, repair crews were still unable to reach areas hit hardest by the storm. About one million lines in Louisiana alone were affected. Damage was widespread and unprecedented. Flooding and lack of power remained key obstacles. Service was improving in many areas throughout the region, but New Orleans remained under water. Emergency communications were affected, too. Police and Sheriffs offices shared public safety mutual aid channels instead of their usual frequencies. The New Orleans Police headquarters were flooded, and their dispatch center was moved to the Hilton. But telecom providers and emergency personal alike were improvising fixes on the fly.
Even the Federal Communications Commission got involved with recovery efforts. The Commission waived a number of licensing and application requirements and stayed open throughout the Labor Day weekend to facilitate emergency provisioning of telephone numbers and other service requests.
By Friday, a 40-channel primary transmitter for emergency communications in New Orleans had been restored. The network actually survived the storm, but a piece of glass had punctured a generator radiator and repair technicians had been prevented from entering the city.
Outside of New Orleans, despite severe flooding and storm damage, service either had not been lost or had been largely repaired. This is what one might expect after “normal” natural disasters. But Katrina is anything but normal.
The cost estimates are just beginning to be crunched. Goldman Sachs estimates the financial effect of Katrina on wireless and wireline carriers will be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, likely eclipsing the damages “of all the hurricanes in 2004 and potentially Hurricane Andrew in 1992.”
It’s unrealistic to assume that any person or nation can go riding through history without encountering unexpected disaster. If you ride horses, eventually you’ll fall. We’ve just been thrown a disaster of epic proportions. There’s a whole lot to learn from this catastrophe. Were mistakes made? Surely. Could we have prevented scores of human tragedies? Yes, indeed. Meanwhile, we need to recognize the unprecedented proportions of this event. And from what I’ve seen so far, we’re fully up to the task of getting back up on the horse—and winning the race while we’re at it.
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Contact: Geoff Feiss, General Manager
Montana Telecommunications Association
406.442.45316
gfeiss@telecomassn.org
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