NASHVILLE, Tenn.-Tower industry officials last week said lessons learned from last year’s horrific storms have made them better prepared for the next big one.
Speaking at PCIA’s wireless infrastructure convention, tower executives outlined how they have improved all aspects of disaster planning and response after first being hit with Hurricane Katrina and later preparing for Hurricane Rita. Indeed, attendance at PCIA’s show last year would have been even greater but for the unprecedented challenges tower companies and their partners encountered when one major storm after another hit Gulf Coast states.
Restoring communications in Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia and Alabama had tower companies and their contractors enter dangerous territory, forcing them to ensure the safety of employees and their families while making good on commercial obligations to wireless carriers.
To get the job done then and in the future, tower industry experts underscored the importance of safety, planning, gaining access to impacted areas and coordination of response efforts internally and externally with key stakeholders and government agencies. Having cells on wheels, or COWs, available for deployment after a disaster is not good enough when roads are washed out, power lines downed and chaos reigns.
At the same time, tower and construction executives conceded it is next to impossible to prepare for all the repercussions of a disaster, especially when it involves the level of death, destruction and confounding confusion witnessed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Moreover, hurricanes have company when it comes to wreaking havoc in the communications industry. Floods, earthquakes and terrorist attacks are also potent forces capable of taking down tower operations. At the same time, the tower industry appears confident it is up to the task, not needing a federal mandate to direct companies how to restore communications outages in a timely fashion.
“One of the things we found last year was access to impacted areas was difficult because people didn’t have the necessary credentials to get in. People didn’t know who they worked for or who they were representing,” said Jim Hopkins, vice president of sales at SiteMaster. Hopkins said employees now carry necessary identification and certifications to gain access to hard-hit locales.
Hopkins said restoring telecom networks also depends a lot on keeping internal lines of communications open among management, company rescue crews and outside contractors.
“Pre-planning is extremely critical to successful recovery from any type of a disaster,” said G. Lee Lushbaugh Jr., principal vice president and general manager of Americas Telecommunications at Bechtel Telecommunications. Lushbaugh said the two biggest factors that take sites down are typically power and lack of fuel.
“Bottom line: We really need to provide as many ways as possible for our people to reach out for help and assistance. We want to make sure resources and materials are available,” said Lushbaugh. He said Hurricane Katrina exposed the shortage of skill labor craft in the United States, a shortcoming he believes policy-makers need to address.
Tower officials said planning and preparation should begin well before a disaster strikes and that the response should be swift and decisive.
“We basically evaluate each of the impacted areas, so we’ll track the storm as it comes inland,” said Glenn Veatch, national director of operations at American Tower Corp. “We’ll be able to designate which towers were impacted by the storm as it comes inland.” Veatch said command centers and two-person teams are set up to assess damage, a process that allows American Tower to determine whether facilities can be repaired with in-house resources or if contractor help is required. He said American Tower works with local telecom carriers and power companies as well with the Federal Communications Commission and Federal Aviation Administration to repair tower lighting.
Chris Tretter, vice president of operations at Crown Castle USA, also emphasized planning. “Preparation is the key. If there’s anything that we reinforced it is our preparation,” he stated. Tretter said having vigorous quality control and comprehensive training ingrained in the normal course of business goes a long way toward minimizing structural damage and response missteps when disasters occur. “Get everybody on the same page early, before it happens,” Tretter advised.
Resources, billing issues
John Vivian, corporate account manager of telecommunications at Caterpillar Inc., said he witnessed something odd after Katrina.
“What we saw with the wireless industry was that each carrier has cell towers and each has a back-up generator,” said Vivian. But he added: “There was no cohesive pooling of resources. Maybe two repair trucks headed out to the same site, instead of one.”
Vivian said it is critical that carriers establish relationships with emergency suppliers before a catastrophe hits, noting that having contracts ready and a billing process in place at the front end reduces confusion later. “You need a compensation plan. You’re going to use a lot of different people, a lot different expertise working a lot of different hours,” said. “Are you just going to have a lot of red ink when it’s all over and say, `We did our duty?”‘ asked Vivian.
