My cousin Kevin, who is in the Navy, wrote this insightful email about the communications breakdown that hampered early rescue efforts in New Orleans:
\n<\/p>\n
Being somewhat of an expert in establishing battlefield communications
\n(since that is one of the chief roles of the E-2), I figure I could address
\nAunt Pat’s questions.<\/p>\nIt is not surprising the cellular system went down. If it had remained
\nunharmed the system would probably be overwhelmed with calls being made into
\nand out of the disaster area. On 9-11 the cellular network crashed in NYC
\nand DC due to the incredible increase in phone traffic. Also, antennas are
\nnot very good at standing up to hurricanes, physical damage has probably
\nleft many powered station inoperable. If the antenna did survive at a
\nstation, I suppose a generator could be used. However, there probably
\nwasn’t anyone there to turn it on if such a generator existed. They would
\nhave evacuated (hopefully).<\/p>\nWith the communications built into the infrastructure wiped out, the only
\ncomms available on the ground were the radios carried by the police and the
\nNational Guard. And knowing the government’s talent for standardization, it
\nis doubtful the Police and the Guard were using the same type of radio, and
\neven more doubtful they knew each others frequency plan. These hand units
\nwould have been in constant use during the first response. Anyone who has a
\ncell phone knows how fast the battery drains when you are talking on it for
\na prolong period of time. So battery life could also be a contributing
\nfactor in the communication break down.<\/p>\nEven in a best case scenario, with charged batteries and a coordinated
\nfrequency plan, portable ground radios have a very limited range. With the
\ndisaster area on the gulf coast being roughly the size of Britain,
\ncoordinating a wide spread rescue effort with the communication tools
\navailable was impossible. Satellite radios could have helped, but they are
\nvery expensive, and don’t make much sense for local police force to
\npurchase. Relay stations are a cheaper alternative to extend all of their
\nradio’s ranges across a city or state, but they go down with the power.<\/p>\nWhen the Navy, Coast Guard, and Army arrived on the scene with rescue
\nhelicopters it added even more non-standardized equipment to the mix
\n(although aviators in general are pretty good at radio communications).
\nThey still suffered from a limited range on their radios due to how low they
\nhad to fly to accomplish their mission. Luckily, the military does have a
\nplatform to help overcome most of these problems, the E-2C Hawkeye. Last
\nweek the VAW-126 Seahawks were quickly deployed to Pensacola, FL. Equipped
\nwith 11 different radios, they are now helping to coordinate the rescue
\nefforts.<\/p>\nWhen the command authority is able to quickly get information to and from
\nall of its assets, the effort is much more effective. We all saw on the
\nnews how much better the rescue coordination became once new lines of
\ncommunication were established.<\/p>\nUnfortunately there was and still is one group with no way to communicate,
\nthe survivors. I think this is the most tragic aspect of the collapse of
\ncommunication. Many people probably died because they did not have the
\nability to call for help. For everyone building a disaster kit, I highly
\nrecommend adding a battery powered radio capable of transmitting on 121.5
\nMHz or 243.0 MHz, these are aviation distress (‘Guard’) frequencies. You
\nwill be able to contact any aircraft you see flying overhead on one of these
\ntwo frequencies.<\/p>\n-Kevin\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My cousin Kevin, who is in the Navy, wrote this insightful email about the communications breakdown that hampered early rescue efforts in New Orleans:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[16],"class_list":["post-403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-everything","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}