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. "

Windy

[fembots]

Wouldn't satellite signals be affected by rain and wind?

Cellular blimps

[gothzilla]

I remember a story some time ago about a plan to deploy blimps for cell and wi-fi service. I wonder if that plan might be viable now? They could fly away for the storm then fly back shortly afterwards.

I've got a friend

[the_skywise]

who's evacuated out of state and has a cell phone with long distance service, but people are having problems calling TO him. Presumably because the call is still trying to get to New Orleans to figure out where to forward his phone call.

Money to be made here

[MooseTick]

It seems like Verizon, Sprint or someone could make a boatload of money from opportunities like this. They could have a few mobile cell towers that run from generators. When a tornado, hurricane, wind storms, or whatever hit, they truck those towers in as temporary replacements. The local government will appreciate it. The local cell phone users will appreciate it. The people not on their plan will make them a bundle in roaming fees!

They could store them centrally inthe country. Since they usually have a large warning, they could get them nearby the pending storm. Right after the storm clears, instant tower.

3. Profit

A Rather Prescient Article

[Cr0w T. Trollbot]

Written in the wake of Hurricane Ivan, describing just how difficult it would be for New Orleans to recover from a disaster of this size:
"In this hypothetical storm scenario, it is estimated that it would take nine weeks to pump the water out of the city, and only then could assessments begin to determine what buildings were habitable or salvageable. Sewer, water, and the extensive forced drainage pumping systems would be damaged. National authorities would be scrambling to build tent cities to house the hundreds of thousands of refugees unable to return to their homes and without other relocation options." [colorado.edu]

Crow T. Trollbot

Re:A Rather Prescient Article

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

Actually it is worse than that. They didn't predict the breach of two levees, which are still allowing water to fill the city.

They need to take some lessons from the Dutch.

Re:Ham Radio

[YrWrstNtmr]

I just heard a short piece on NPR about this:

An 85 yr old woman was trapped on a rooftop. She somehow managed to get a cellphone call out to someone in Tulsa, OK. From there, the Red Cross took it, and asked for HAM assistance. From there, the message was relayed by ham ops to Idaho, then to Utah, then to [somewhere else], then down to the Coast Guard in Mobile, AL.

She was rescued.

Re:Ham Radio

[xee]

Indeed. In the aftermath of hurricane andrew [wikipedia.org] my father and I (both hams) went into the areas with heavy devistation to take messages from people with no communication and pass them on to thier friends and relatives across the country. We also sat by the radio at home and made phone calls on behalf of other hams who were in the field taking messages. I'm sure this is happening in LA as well. Why doesn't ham radio get more press in times like this? Because Big Media doesn't want to encourage encroachment on THEIR airwaves!

Re:One for the "This is an outrage!" crowd...

[mikael]

During the cold war, radio antennae were designed to be retracted underground in antipication of a nuclear strike, and to have a motor strong enough to push their way through several foot of rubble after the blast

If you could combine this concept with a wind power generator, you could have more a resilient network - Suppose cell phone towers could have a wind speed monitor and shutdown if the wind speed exceeded a certain limit, rather than wait to be knocked down in a blizzard or a storm?

A Huge Aerial Shot of Hurricane Katrina...

[antdude]

Big shot [nasa.gov]. It is 6200x8000 pixels and 8.4 MB big. Amazing how clear and big we can get with today's satellites.

Re:Windy

[Guspaz]

This is why I am very frustrated at the FCC's limitations on UWB broadcast signal strengths. UWB devices are resistant to interference, and can have enormous ranges at very low power outputs. Not to mention enormous bandwidth and the potential for an enormous number of users. We're talking multiple gigabits at insane ranges with very little power. That is a lot more simultaneous voice than HAM radio or cellular service (or even wimax) can provide. Wimax is a joke next to UWB's potential, but with current limitations on UWB, it looks like UWB is limited to wires (UWB over cable TV coax), ultra-short range uses (Wireless USB), and wifi-type ranges (100 to 300 feet).

300 feet at a thousandth the power of a cellphone. Now imagine if you had the broadcast power of a cellphone in a UWB device.

Re:/. has been watching too much mass media

[Stonent1]

Rain affects the small space between the reflector and the LNB. So if rain travels between the dish itself and the "stalk" pointing at the dish, then your signal will degrade since the relatively weak signal is concentrated into a small spot. As long as the rain is diverting the weak signal coming from the satellite. So think of it like shining a flashlight at someone and the put their hand up to interfere, the light still manages to mostly get to the destination. If someone shoots a laser pointer at you and you block it with your hand, then that is it, no more signal.
 
This is why you'll see "dish socks" stretchy covers that go over the dish. It keeps rain from passing through the dish and the LNB.

Re:Ham Radio

[Mister Transistor]

Umm... That's not quite true. It is a commonly held misconception that in an emergency anything goes. However, in the real world it doesn't quite work that way... In case of emegency, you can transmit anywhere you wish, but you had better be prepared to answer for and justify your actions.

You CAN still be held liable for the consequences of your actions after the fact. There were a couple of similar cases I read about where a guy out hiking got lost in the mountains and there was no cell service or any ham station reachable, and he used his modified radio to call into the local police repeater to report his emergency. Clearly he would have died if he had not been rescued, yet he was still fined and had his equipment confiscated because of his actions.

In short, if you are faced with the decision of losing your Ham license or dying, you'll take the former, but as I said you will most likely have to pay the piper later.

BTW - Yes, IAAH (I Am a Ham) and I'm the statewide repeater frequency coordinator for one of the largest metro areas in the USA, so I speak with some authority here.

Re:Flooding

[e1618978]

I bet after this the houses that are above the flood line will sell at a premium price...

Re:A Rather Prescient Article

[demachina]

A big part of the New Orleans problem is that the levees have been abused. There is a plan on the table where they would have started intentionally flooding the wetlands around New Orleans from the Mississippi and start depositing mud there and building them up so they are a better buffer from storms. Not sure about pumping the ground water but the soil in the region is alluvial and its natural for it to sink. It was OK when the Mississippi flooded it routinely and deposited fresh silt on it to keep building it back up. Unfortunately the Army Corps of Engineers undid this natural restoration on a large scale with levees and flood control. Something about the hubris of man seems appropriate in this case. Of course this solution doesn't work for the city of New Orleans. It is probably a doomed city unless you spend billions constantly building up the levees, and the levees are very vulnerable to the increasingly intense Hurricanes in the region. Its going to continue sinking due to the nature of the soil under it, you can't flood it to naturally replenish it with silt, the sea level is going to continue rising due to global warming. You have to wonder if maybe this event isn't an indicator that it should be abandoned and relocated to a site with a more viable long term future.

There is also some karma in play here that an intense hurricane which was probably intensified by CO2 induced global warming, thanks to abnormally warm temperatures in the Atlantic and Gulf, would lead to devastation in Louisiana which is at the heart of the oil and gas part of the fossil fuel industry in the U.S. and is responsible for much of America's CO2 pollution capacity.

Re:Cellular blimps

[dgatwood]

Here's what I don't get. Amtrak runs trains up and down from Chicago to New Orleans on a daily basis, and also to someplace in New York. Do you really mean to tell me that they couldn't have gotten every one of those tourists out of New Orleans and surrounding areas? Even if they only have two trains to do it, you fill them, go an hour inland, dump everybody, run back, repeat.

No, what we have here is a bunch of companies that could have helped but chose to sit on their asses. Two choice quotes from comments at http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2005/08/kat rina_a_terri.html [chron.com]:

Amtrak crapped out on us - closing up shop and shooing all their paying passengers out of the building - telling all passengers who were/are in New Orleans to transfer to other trains that we have to fend for ourselves. No emergency assistance - no emergency transportation to catch other trains or (at least) get us out of town - no emergency assistance to get us a place to stay.

...but the thing that really ticks me off is that amtrak closed up shop and activated a law loophole that would prevent the louisiana [sic] goverment from useing [sic] there trains to evacuate innocent people from louisiana [sic] especially new orleans [sic]. and just when you thought amtrak [sic] couldn't sink any lower.

Personally, I'd like to see the heads of Amtrak and other companies that could have helped but didn't brought up on charges of aiding and abetting involuntary manslaughter.

Yep, Ham Radio is working...

[msauve]

and will continue to, at least until BPL destroys all HF communications. http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2005/08/30/1/?nc= 1 [arrl.org]

Geeky antennae stuff

[Nefarious Wheel]

My old departed friend Bob Long (W6QBN) when he wasn't telling me how these newfangled digital computers work, loved to talk about his amateur radio habit. An ex USN carrier radio officer, his interests covered morse skills, happily conveyng enormous detail about why you need an IF stage (think "applications middleware" but in an analogue sense) but more than anything he loved to rattle on about the subject of antennae.

It seems that you can get one or two watts of transmitter to go amazing distances if you know a little antennae theory and know how to lay your hands on a reel of coax cable.

Long-wires, capacity hats, incredible things like directional-discontinuity ring radiators, very high tech that can be built with a few iron fence stakes and a bit of wire and a good head for geometry.

Astoundingly powerful communications technology for an extremely accessible cost. If you want to know more get an old ARRL handbook. Sort of like the older Boy Scout Handbooks from back in the days when they were useful, but cover all the basics of home-brew transmitters. Get one.

One of the problems ham radio faces in times of cataclysmic storm is the shape of the ionosphere at the time and place. It's used as a signal reflector. On good days you can whisper from Maine to Tokyo on a watt. On bad days, you can't punch through with 50MW unless you have line of sight.

800Mhz failed, hams save the day again

[KB3JUV]

I just recieved reports that New Oreleans trunked 800 MHz trunked system failed. Ham radio operators are pretty much standing by waiting to get into the city. People are being evacuated from the city and the last thing they would do is let hams go in. I have been listening to the Hurricane Net and am really amazed by all the work they and the SATERN guys are doing. Good luck to all of them.

Cell companies cheaping out (was Ive got a friend)

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got a friend who's evacuated out of state and has a cell phone with long distance service, but people are having problems calling TO him. Presumably because the call is still trying to get to New Orleans to figure out where to forward his phone call.

This is a good reason that the cellular companies need to re-instate the Local Access Numbers (or Roamer Access Numbers depending who you ask)

It's the system that was used when all the local cellular systems were independant. If you were roaming, people had to know where you were and call a phone number there. They would then enter your phone number (MIN) and your cellular phone would ring.

I continued using the system for quite some time after roaming call delivery was implemented. It was a handy way for people from the area you were in to call you without you or them having to pay long distance fees. (After the so called follow-me roaming was implemented, I would get calls from people where I was, paying long distance to my home area, while I was paying long distance from my home area. This was before everyone had free long distance)

Re:Red Cross Donations

[Savantissimo]

My dad is a pathologist with over 25 years experience running a hospital laboratory. He says the Red Cross is just this side of organized crime. They take blood donations and RENT the blood to hospitals for something like $100/unit for about 3 weeks. Then, instead of freezing it, they either destroy it or sell it for components. This policy, along with their effective monopoly creates severe blood shortages, extorts money from gravely injured people and the continual artificial crises give them propaganda opportunities to look like heroes. In many other ways the American Red Cross is bureaucratic, inept, wasteful, callous and self-serving. They have huge reserves, palatial offices and they do not deserve your support. Don't give them anything without making sure they will use your gift as you direct, and get it in writing.