IT resilience helps in Harvey aftermath
How IT infrastructure helped emergency responders and relief efforts following Hurricanes Harvey and Irma
By WP BrandStudio
Houston, Florida, and islands in the Caribbean were braced for Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, which struck within about two weeks of each other. The normally subdued National Weather Service tweeted that Harvey was “unprecedented & all impacts are unknown & beyond anything experienced.” Even so, nothing could have adequately prepared Texas for 50 inches of rainfall that started August 25. Tens of thousands of people were flooded out of their homes and scores died in the natural disaster. The cleanup was expected to run into the tens of billions of dollars and take years to complete.
And even as Harvey finished dumping its trillions of gallons of water on Houston and surrounding communities, Hurricane Irma bore down on the Caribbean, where it flattened an estimated 95% of the buildings on the island of Barbuda, according to Gaston Browne, Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda. Irma then continued north across the Florida Keys and up the west coast of Florida. By then diminished from its full Category 5 force to a tropical storm, it nevertheless knocked out power for some 6.5 million Florida businesses and households.
But throughout it all, IT infrastructure stayed on the job, keeping emergency responders in contact and routing calls and tweets for help from trapped and stranded residents. In many ways, the continuous service was a triumph of planning and a testament to the hard work of service teams on the ground.
One key indicator of the area’s IT resiliency was the fact that many of the Houston area’s major data centers stayed up and running throughout Harvey’s duration. One of those data centers, Data Foundry’s Houston 2 facility, was described in the company’s online storm updates as having been built to survive a category 5 hurricane. Its staff was prepared to settle in for the long haul, with cots, food, water and even washing machines and showers.
But IT infrastructure can only help in an emergency if it can reach the people who need it. To meet the challenge, mobile service providers turned out in force to keep their networks up and running in hard-hit areas.
In Houston, for example, AT&T launched a fleet of nearly 50 drones to enable technicians inspect cell towers isolated by flooding. At Harvey’s peak, AT&T deployed 17 satellite Cell on Light Trucks (COLTs), four Emergency Communications Vehicles, four charging stations, one special operations/hazmat trailer, and six technology recovery and support trailers in affected areas. For areas without service in both Texas and Florida, the mobile service provider deployed satellite cell trailers and trucks and even mobile charging stations to keep its customers connected. The company also waived service fees throughout the affected areas so that residents could be sure of staying in contact.
Mobile infrastructure also benefited relief workers tending to evacuees in shelters. In what became one of Houston’s largest shelters, the NRG Center—which relief organizations reconfigured to shelter up to 10,000 evacuees—Harris Health System set up a walk-in clinic, complete with a pre-configured IT network. The network enabled physicians treating evacuees to register their patients, look up medical records, and order prescriptions.
Forecasters and emergency planners may not be able to predict the scale or even the immediate areas of impact of natural disasters, but as the response to Harvey and Irma show, they can plan for the inevitable disruptions caused by events like hurricanes, keeping essential IT services up and running for the duration. And that can make all the difference.
