It was a rough week for southeast Texas, as Hurricane Harvey slammed into the coast and dropped an unprecedented amount of water — more than 50 inches, in some places. The pictures and video posted to social media by residents and journalists attempted to show both the scale of the destruction and the heroism of the folks on the ground (and in the air).
Aerial drone footage from Fort Bend County shows the Brazos River flooding after Hurricane Harvey. https://t.co/MnSzCSSgSX pic.twitter.com/tiSjfL9cQp
— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) September 1, 2017
Watch US Navy sailors airlift stranded Texans during intense flooding from Hurricane Harvey pic.twitter.com/O3m4sb2kXc
— Business Insider (@BusinessInsider) August 31, 2017
It’s notable, though, that images like those and many more could even be posted. The general consensus seems to be that on the whole, the cellular networks weathered the storm relatively well, given the scale of the storm.
So far, cellphone networks have weathered Harvey. https://t.co/df9gCTrTHY
— The Associated Press (@AP) August 31, 2017
Cell Networks Fair Much Better During Hurricane Harvey Compared to Katrina https://t.co/bFplakUdCD via @SSIMagazine #LTWllc
— LTW (@LTWllc) August 31, 2017
While the Houston market itself seems to have fared pretty well in terms of service — when I checked in with the carriers on Monday, they reported that 5% or less of their sites in Houston were down — areas outside the city, particularly hard-hit cities like Rockport, still had issues.
Mayor of #Rockport, #Texas, says #HurricaneHarvey emergency response hampered by loss of cellphone service. https://t.co/oCdDyaSZJl
— AP Central U.S. (@APCentralRegion) August 26, 2017
The Federal Communications Commission has been keeping track, and commissioners are taking notes.
3.8% of cell sites in the #Harvey affected areas are out of service, down from 4.2% yesterday. More: https://t.co/1Sd07Z82l1
— The FCC (@FCC) August 31, 2017
#Harvey is exposing too many communications vulnerabilities. #FCC needs a plan to address them. Now.https://t.co/YOmJUcfTN7
— Jessica Rosenworcel (@JRosenworcel) August 30, 2017
The @FCC expanding disaster recovery reporting on communications networks in #Texas and #Louisiana: https://t.co/75nzT1CGKy #Harvey
— Jessica Rosenworcel (@JRosenworcel) August 31, 2017
Next month, the FCC will hold a workshop on Improving Situational Awareness During 911 Outages: https://t.co/yCkaJpcHGl #PublicSafety
— The FCC (@FCC) August 31, 2017
The conversations I’ve heard in the context of the First Responders Network Authority over the years have basically been that in a major disaster — flood, hurricane, earthquake, you name it — you are inevitably going to lose some sites depending on how bad the destruction is. So you’d best have deployables ready to be trucked in as soon as the waters start to recede, which it appears the carriers had on-hand and pre-staged. Communications lessons are always one of the post-disaster areas that get scrutinized, and it will be interesting to see what lessons are learned from Harvey — and if carriers either voluntarily or by regulation end up having to do more site hardening.
Harris County, by the by, is one of the FirstNet early builder projects that has a Band 14 network and some devices available for first responders. I was interested to see that they were prepping Band 14 equipment for hurricane recovery work:
Portable Band 14 #pslte hotspot (Pelican box) set up at NRG Park for post #harvey recovery work. pic.twitter.com/aZo6KUssa2
— Harris County LTE (@HarrisCountyLTE) August 30, 2017
Yet even as Harvey recovery gets started, some meteorologists are already fretting that another major hurricane in the works could hit the U.S. It’s too early to tell and there are disagreements between the two major hurricane models on a projected path, but Hurricane Irma became a Class 3 storm in the Atlantic yesterday and is making its way westward. But after this week, the tweet below is probably enough to make anyone on the southeastern seaboard nervous. And even if Irma misses the U.S., we’re still only partway through hurricane season.
Up to a 30% chance via the 12Z Calibrated ECMWF EPS for a landfalling Major Hurricane somewhere along the eastern seaboard #Irma pic.twitter.com/nUmZkPGJpY
— Doc V (@MJVentrice) September 1, 2017
