FCC Hurricane Michael after-action report

Wed May 15 19:48:17 UTC 2019

On Mon, 13 May 2019, frnkblk at iname.com wrote:
> One of my takeaways from that article was that burying fiber underground
> could likely have avoided many/most of these fiber cuts, though I’m not
> familiar enough with the terrain to know how feasible that is.

Nature is more powerful than humans.

In Puerto Rico and US Virgin Islands, the hurricanes severely damaged 
essentially every type of infrastructure. Buried cables, aerial cables, 
microwave towers, cellular towers, satellite dishes, solar panels, primary 
and backup power stations, access roads, accesss airports, access 
seaports, broadcast radio/tv, cable TV systems, etc. etc. etc.

All the island backbone ring buried cable systems in PR experienced 
multiple cuts due to mudslides, bridge failures, and other restoration 
activites.

Immediately after the hurricanes, essentially every infrastructure 
damage assessment was 75% or worse, with most communications 
outside plant infrastructure 95% to 100% damaged.

When there is only light to moderate damage, independent repair efforts 
are faster because you avoid lots coodination meetings.  But with the 
major damage in PR and USVI, the lack of coodination caused conflicting 
repair efforts and re-work for the first several months. It wasn't patch 
and move on, it was rebuild from scratch.