By Robert Travis Scott, Capital bureau
Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
Copyright 2006 The Times-Picayune Publishing Company
BATON ROUGE, La. — There was such a blur of activity in the days after Hurricane Katrina that Michael Abiatti can’t recall exactly when he first realized that, as other technologies faltered, cell phone text messaging was a reliable form of communication.
A student trapped by the flood at Xavier University had sent a text message on his cell phone to his out-of-state parents, who in turn tried to reach someone by voice phone in the state’s higher education hierarchy. As the Board of Regents’ technology chief stationed at the state emergency command center, Abiatti got the call and reported the situation to the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, which sent a rescue boat.
“As disjointed as that sounds, that’s a real system,” Abiatti said.
The Xavier scenario probably would play out the same way this year if another hurricane knocked down the phone system and text messaging once again became the communication system of necessity for the general public. Anyone wanting to send an SOS by text message would have to contact a friend or relative, rather than the authorities in charge of rescue efforts.
That is because there is nothing yet comparable to a 9-1-1 emergency call system for text messaging or e-mail.
Abiatti is now chairman of the Statewide Interoperable Communication System Executive Committee, a new board planning for better communications among state and local officials responding both to routine and catastrophic events. While the group is making progress setting up new radio communications for state and local rescue teams, it has not discussed how the public could send text or e-mail messages for emergencies.
Designing a system
Some officials on the state level and in New Orleans have started looking into the issue, but technological and jurisdictional obstacles are standing in the way of a quick solution.
Abiatti said he is trying to figure out how it could be done. A new system to receive the messages would need the components, capacity and know-how among operators to make it work. Local emergency-preparedness offices would need to be involved, and citizens would have to learn how to use it, Abiatti said.
Lt. Col. Joseph Booth, the top communications official with the Louisiana State Police, said people in his agency received text messages on their cell phones from imperiled residents during the Katrina crisis, but the agency had no central person or system to handle them. Booth said he is in talks with the cell phone corporations to explore solutions. The design and engineering of a system to handle the messages are hurdles to cross, he said.
The National Emergency Number Association has launched an effort called Next Generation E911 to examine the shortcomings of response mechanisms to emergency messages from cell phones by text message, automobile satellite-link radio systems, the Internet and voice phone systems over the Internet.
“While the existing 9-1-1 system has been a success story for more than 30 years, it has been stretched to its limit as technology advances,” according to an association report. “Unfortunately, the current 9-1-1 system was never intended to receive calls and data from these new and emerging technologies. As a result, it is being asked to perform functions it was not designed to handle. In short, the nation’s 9-1-1 systems are in need of a significant overhaul.”
Communication breakdown
Just as the multiple levee breaks in the New Orleans area laid bare the disastrous faults of the flood control system, so did the breakdown in radio and phone systems after Katrina demonstrate the shortcomings of emergency communications.
Radio communications for emergency personnel were frustrated by damaged towers, old systems incapable of handling heavy traffic and diverse devices incapable of talking to one another. Cell phones were affected when their network land-line connections flooded and a storm surge destroyed the Interstate 10 twin span, containing a backbone fiber-optic cable, among other problems.
Cell phone voice transmissions across the Gulf Coast had trouble connecting, but so-called SMS messages, for short message service sent on cell phones, and Blackberry messages penetrated the Katrina communications fog with noteworthy success.
Verizon Wireless spokesman Patrick Kimball said text messaging can get by on a weaker signal and operates on different channels than voice transmissions. Also, if the network is busy, a text message just waits in a queue until the path is clear, while a voice call will not go through and the caller has to dial again. Text messages take only a second to transmit, whereas voice calls last until the conversation is over, Kimball said. Text messaging also is less vulnerable to a land-line network breakdown and has an advantage in the way it is routed.
Few cell phone towers in Louisiana blew down during Katrina, and out-of-commission towers were quickly supplemented with mobile units, cell phone companies reported. Most of Verizon’s towers had their own self-starting generators if they lost power, Kimball said.
Ask a teen how to do it
Text messaging is catching on, especially among the young, according to industry observers. Wireless users in the United States sent 48.7 billion SMS messages in the last six months of 2005, double the amount in the same period in 2004, according to the industry group CTIA-The Wireless Association.
While cell phone companies offer specially priced packages for high-volume users of text messaging, a common misconception is that customers have to buy one of those packages to send text messages. In fact, most cell phone companies will transmit text messages from any phone with that capability for about 10 cents apiece, and nearly all cell phones sold these days are so equipped. Most numerical key pads can punch up letters of the alphabet.
The 9-1-1 stations, which in Louisiana are operated by state boards on the parish level, have in recent years upgraded the handling of cell phone calls. The phone number and address of land-line calls usually are recognized when they come into 9-1-1 stations. A national effort is expanding the ability of the stations to pinpoint the location of cell phone callers dialing 9-1-1. Wireless users in the United States place an average 224,000 calls daily to 9-1-1, according to CTIA.
But text messaging is another matter. The 9-1-1 stations in Louisiana and elsewhere lack the equipment and procedures to accept text messages from people in an emergency, according to officials with state and national agencies and organizations that deal with emergency calls.
William Vincent, a Lafayette Parish Homeland Security director who serves as secretary of the Louisiana chapter of NENA, said 9-1-1 stations want to move to text-message capability “as soon as possible.” The solution will require a cooperative effort by the various 9-1-1 jurisdictions, the wireless carriers and BellSouth, he said.
Orleans is investigating
“That is an excellent concept,” said Ausettua Amenkum, public information officer for 911 Orleans, the city’s 9-1-1 operation. The office is studying the concept of a 9-1-1 system for text messaging and is working with wireless companies to see what is possible, Amenkum said.
Greg Meffert, Mayor Ray Nagin’s chief information officer, said the city does not have control over the 9-1-1 operation or its ability to accept text messages. The mayor’s initiative for a wireless Internet system in the city may help provide emergency responses for people sending text messages or Internet-based transmissions, he said. The city’s system will be a two-way street, offering a “free open network to connect City Hall and citizens that will stay up in the storm,” Meffert said in an e-mail response to questions.
For Abiatti, the primary focus now is to establish better radio communication for state and local emergency operations officials and first responders, which include police, fire, health and rescue personnel. State Police have taken the lead in expanding a new-generation digital radio system with greater capacity to handle a higher volume of users. In the New Orleans region, the federal government is supplying thousands of the radio handsets and other devices, either through loans of equipment or direct financing.
In the meantime, since Katrina the cell phone companies have beefed up their disaster preparedness and made their facilities more durable. In the future, the companies expect to pre-position more communications assets to move in after a storm.
Dawn Benton, spokeswoman for Cingular, recommends that cell phone users prepare by making sure they, and their friends and relatives, know how to send and read text messages and have a plan in place to text message designated individuals outside the storm area for help.
“It was a lifesaver for many people,” Benton said.