[EAS] Cell Reliability

[Tim Stoffel]

Bill,
    There were a couple of bad fires north and northeast of here (and one scaringly close to my house!). The Nixon fire burned something like 72 square miles, and I know took out some services. It left that area looking like a scene from the Mars Curisoity rover. Little KRNG FM's transmitter site was smack in the middle of that conflagration, and somehow miracously survived without as much as a scorch mark.
    I then watched the Long Valley (I think) fire slowly cross my northern  horizon over a period of several days. That one did mess up a bunch of infrastructure, and required some pretty aggressive measures to control.
    So around Reno, we got flooded out this winter and burned out this summer.
    EAS content: I'll have to back and look, but I think there were a couple of evacuations ordered.

Tim Stoffel

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-----Original Message-----
From: EAS [mailto:eas-bounces at radiolists.net] On Behalf Of Bill Ruck

Tim,

Remember the fire north of Reno a couple of months ago?  That fire burned AT&T's aerial fiber run and put most of Humboldt County NV back into the 20's.  No cell service on most carriers (my Verizon
worked) and no Internet service.

In what I call a "single string" you can get technology to work and save money.  Until the string breaks and you have no backup or redundancy, leaving one to hold a sensitive part of your anatomy saying "Oops".

It is amazing how so many people expect their cell phone to work 100% of the time.  While it is true that it works well much of the time it is nowhere as reliable as the old fashioned red and green wires.  Even with the sad state of what used to be The Bell System.

The FCC reports don't go into details but it looks like slowly the area is coming back to life.

Bill Ruck
Curmudgeon
San Francisco