Comments on: The Day the Cell Phones Died – Part 1

By: VinnieL

VinnieL — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 16:27:16 +0000

I appreciate the display of Amateur Radio gear however what the masses need to know is you need a license to use it. We always welcome new amateurs into the hobby, but you must take a test in order to get a license. Many groups believe they can use amateur radio without a license in any emergency. If you intend to buy amateur equipment by all means study and get your license so you can use it all the time. The test questions are available from the ARRL.org or the W5YI group, the test is not that difficult. We’d like to have you!I’ve been a ham since age 16. WB0VQP

By: SmithKoWitz

SmithKoWitz — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 04:36:00 +0000

Here in the PAC NW, there are plenty of areas where there is ZERO service and more widely spread depending on your carrier and this without a disaster. I feel sorry for those who do not have a land line (me included) if and when there is a disaster and we are unable to reach family members in another town or state. It’ll be like the days of old with the Pony Express delivering mail : ) We rely to heavily on technology that can be totally shut down and break communications from town to town.

By: Harold

Harold — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 19:17:56 +0000

Because of the nature of a tornado, you exaggerate the issues posed to Joplin residents after our May 22nd, 2011 one.

Most certainly cell towers in and beyond the “zone of total destruction” came down; two were less than 100 feet from my apartment and came down on the stack of apartments a few feet to my east and one came down in the parking and driving area ~ 25 feet to my west. Although there were temporary replacements in place within 2-3 days.

Because of the narrow track of a tornado, if we couldn’t get a signal all we had to do was to move a little north or south of it and we got service, not a problem if you were capable of walking, plus *many* people came to help.

I believe that a large fraction of the 1,300 initially unaccounted for was due to one of our two hospitals getting totaled, and *immediately* evacuated. That resulted in a lot of people getting stashed in area hospitals without formal tracing (normal citizens were just showing up in their pickups and the like, in one noted case getting a quick tutorial in operating a manual respirator (prior to then the patient was operating it…), then they went to another location; who went where to be sorted out later).

The sudden decrease in hospital capacity at the same time more than a 1,000 people needed prompt medical care resulted in contingency plans that I gather didn’t have a priority of immediately informing others of a patient’s location. E.g. the totaled hospital’s staff mostly decamped to our big Memorial Hall, and a couple of overflows from that were established. Injured were also deposited in nearby smaller hospitals, the 20 bed teaching facility in the city’s college (it was no accident the beds and rooms were 100% functional), etc. Plus some of the worst cases were sent to major hospitals 70 miles or further away.

So I’m unconvinced communications failures were an overwhelming factor in this problem.

All that said, when a disaster’s effects are widespread, either knocking down many more towers or depriving the systems of power (that’ll take out a lot of landlines out nowadays when the batteries run out), your point is spot on, you can’t depend on your cell phone for emergency communications.