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Communicaitons industry finds lessons in Katrina disaster

NEW YORK — The Gulf Coast communications havoc caused by Hurricane Katrina highlighted potential vulnerabilities in the nation's phone and data networks and has government officials and industry experts considering new ways to prepare for natural disasters and terrorist attacks.

While communications companies said they were as prepared as possible for the hurricane, the disaster's scope surprised many and took an enormous toll on the infrastructure that made most phone calls and Internet access possible in the area. The damage left thousands unable to call for help or contact loved ones and amplified the chaos for emergency workers.

The storm knocked out more than 3 million customer phone lines in the Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama area, damaging switching centers and the lines themselves, according to the Federal Communications Commission. On the wireless side, Katrina shut down more than a thousand cellular sites.

"We will need to learn from this event and work together to improve the reliability, survivability, and security of our nation's telecommunications networks," FCC Chairman Kevin Martin and Commissioner Michael Copps said Friday in a joint statement after returning from the region.

The FCC has been helping coordinate the effort to restore service in the area and plans to hold a meeting in Washington on Thursday to discuss Katrina's effect on communications. An FCC panel of industry leaders meets Sept. 21 to continue work on making communications resilient in the face of disaster.

The storm is the third major communications disruption in this country in recent years, following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 and the Northeast blackout of 2003.

Industry officials and analysts say lessons learned in the wake of Katrina include planning to restore service amid deteriorating security, providing more robust wireless network backups, improving emergency worker communications and sustaining the lifeline of electricity with more protected backup systems.

Many disruptions occurred after backup generators located in low places flooded. Other generators ran dry and more fuel was slow in coming.

The storm also wiped out some of the most hardened facilities, such as transmission towers built to withstand severe hurricanes. The lawlessness that descended on New Orleans also hindered repair crews trying to restore service.

"The lesson I learned from this one is not so much in the details of the network design or preparedness, but the issues we dealt with in facing a situation with civil unrest and security issues for our employees," said BellSouth Chief Technology Officer Bill Smith. He said company convoys delivering technicians and supplies like generator fuel in New Orleans were often delayed and required armed escorts.

BellSouth Corp., the Atlanta-based phone company primarily responsible for the region's land-line phone network, has estimated its damage at up to $600 million.

The company, accustomed to dealing with hurricanes, prepared extensively for Katrina, readying mobile generators and personnel to restore services, Smith said. He said a big difference this time was the sheer amount of water involved from Katrina's storm surge and the flooding of New Orleans.

One BellSouth facility on the Mississippi coast may be the only building still standing in its community, Smith said, but the storm surge covered the structure and flooded the equipment inside.

"You could imagine a central office building looking like the Hoover dam if you try to get to the point where it can withstand anything possible," he said. "Mother Nature has a very powerful hand, and to think that you could build something able to withstand anything and everything is pretty hard to imagine."

Rather than just hardening communications networks, some suggest making them more intangible would be a greater defense.

"There needs to be an increased use of wireless, not cell phones only, but for backbone communications so you have more survivable networks," said John Muleta, a partner with Venable LLP in Washington who until recently was the FCC's wireless bureau chief.

While transmission towers could also be destroyed, having a robust wireless capability at the core of a network adds another option beyond just land lines, Muleta said. He said restoring these wireless networks would be easier than digging up streets or waiting for waters to recede after a disaster, especially "something like a tsunami that wipes out whole geographies."

Muleta said possibilities include using "mesh networks," which use many wireless transmitters not dependent on a central base, and the nascent technology WiMax, which can send a broadband Internet connection across more than a dozen miles.

Intel Corp., with special permission from the FCC, has already sent WiMax equipment to an evacuation center at the decommissioned Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. The equipment helps provide Web access and Internet-based telephone service.

Muleta said public safety workers also need to make greater use of satellite phones, bypassing damaged networks and helping to address the ongoing problem of emergency personnel stymied by incompatible communications equipment and frequencies.

This lack of "interoperability" is among the most serious communications issues facing the nation, especially in catastrophic situations like this hurricane, said Kelly Kirwan, a Motorola Inc. vice president who heads an emergency team helping to restore communications for public safety agencies.

Several communication equipment makers have converged on the region.

Lucent Technologies Inc., which provides equipment for many service providers, has sent 150 employees and mobile communications centers on trucks to help restore wired and wireless networks.

Lucent has prepared for large-scale disasters since the Sept. 11 attacks, said Nick DeTura, vice president of Lucent Worldwide Services.

DeTura said Katrina has shown the need for even more mobile network sites that are lighter and can be deployed over a large area. The company is also looking at improving the way it supports search and rescue operations and technology that could better survive water damage and corrosion, he said.

Kirwan said there are limits to preparation.

"In any disaster, there's the chaos theory," Kirwan said. "You plan for everything, but that little 1 percent that you didn't plan for, that's what gets you."

On the Web:

FCC: www.fcc.gov

BellSouth: www.bellsouth.com

Intel: www.intel.com

Motorola: www.motorola.com

Lucent: www.lucent.com

David Ho's e-mail address is dho(at)coxnews.com