Hurricane Maria: Summary of communication status - and lack of

Jean-Francois Mezei jfmezei_nanog at vaxination.ca
Mon Oct 2 04:23:57 UTC 2017


On 2017-10-01 23:09, Jason Baugher wrote:
> The more I read about this, the more disturbed I get. On the one hand, we
> keep hearing that the trucks aren't moving because roads are impassable.

Note: media NEVER shows places that are up and running, only shows
disaster zones, so one may not get full story by looking at media.

Just saw a report on Al Jazeera. 2 sisters trying to get to their father
who lives up in the hills. They show some main roads now open, but they
get to a "road closed" by a huge landslide (with diggers working to
clear it) and have to walk from there, including fording rivers. They
eventially get to their dad who is still alive.

If there are many cell towers on top of hills where the roads are
blocked by landslides, trees, restoration would take a long time before
ground crews get to clear those remote roads that might be considered
low priority.

(and it isn't clear that a helicopter could land there either).

> Do FEMA and the National Guard have the authority to commandeer the trucks
> and deliver the containers themselves? The telcom companies aren't going to
> be able to do much by way of repairs without supplies.

Where telecom wiring is underground, it may be easier to light the links
back up. But where it is aerial, they would have to wait for the
electric utility to fix the poles before stringing new wiring. Not clear
how much of aerial plant needs rebuild, or mere fixes.


After Sandy, Verizon saw the state of corrosion in lower Manhattan and
decided to not fix the copper and string  fibre instead. If enough of
the copper plant is destroyed, would Claro (or govt) consider stringing
FTTH instead of stringing copper?



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