The fires that ripped through California’s wine country moved with
deadly speed, trapping people in their houses and in their
neighborhoods. In many cases, the only warning victims received was if
they happened to see the flames in the distance.
Other residents were able to escape the wind-driven flames if they were able to receive phone calls from neighbors, family or friends.
Emergency service authorities in Napa, Sonoma and Mendocino counties sent out warnings and evacuation orders as quickly as possible. They also sent police and fire units into threatened neighborhoods with sirens blaring and emergency lights flashing to alert residents to the danger.
Unfortunately, many people out of hearing of those sirens never received evacuation orders or phone calls because the cellular networks in the devastated areas were already out of commission.
Local authorities say that the speed of the fires, coupled with the lack of warnings contributed to the loss of 28 people who are reported to have died as of this writing. Authorities also believe that some of the hundreds of people reported missing have died, but the scale of the destruction, the remoteness of some of the burned areas along with cell communications service outages means there is often no way of ascertaining who is actually missing.
Unfortunately, this problem with a fragile wireless infrastructure isn’t confined to Northern California.
It’s evident in other areas where disasters have taken place, such as when Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in late September. There, two-thirds of the cell sites are still out.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. The communications infrastructure in the U.S. can be made more resilient, either through forward-thinking design or through policies that create redundancy in the networks.
Read more: Fragile Wireless Networks Risks Lives in Northern California Wildfires
Other residents were able to escape the wind-driven flames if they were able to receive phone calls from neighbors, family or friends.
Emergency service authorities in Napa, Sonoma and Mendocino counties sent out warnings and evacuation orders as quickly as possible. They also sent police and fire units into threatened neighborhoods with sirens blaring and emergency lights flashing to alert residents to the danger.
Unfortunately, many people out of hearing of those sirens never received evacuation orders or phone calls because the cellular networks in the devastated areas were already out of commission.
Local authorities say that the speed of the fires, coupled with the lack of warnings contributed to the loss of 28 people who are reported to have died as of this writing. Authorities also believe that some of the hundreds of people reported missing have died, but the scale of the destruction, the remoteness of some of the burned areas along with cell communications service outages means there is often no way of ascertaining who is actually missing.
Unfortunately, this problem with a fragile wireless infrastructure isn’t confined to Northern California.
It’s evident in other areas where disasters have taken place, such as when Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in late September. There, two-thirds of the cell sites are still out.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. The communications infrastructure in the U.S. can be made more resilient, either through forward-thinking design or through policies that create redundancy in the networks.
Read more: Fragile Wireless Networks Risks Lives in Northern California Wildfires
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