Residents make phone calls in their neighborhood after heavy rains from hurricane Helene caused record flooding and damage on September 28, 2024 in Asheville, North Carolina.
Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images North America
Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images North America
Anthony Leone and his wife, Corinne Saunders, have already started watching the weather. In a few weeks, they’ll be filling coolers and plugging in generators. He has lived in North Carolina’s Outer Banks for more than 20 years. So he’s familiar with this routine that precedes the inevitable — hurricane season.
As for their cell phones? “We just plan ahead to not use [them].”
Hurricane season runs from June to November, and the National Weather Service said in May it’s predicting below-normal activity in the Atlantic region for the first time since 2015. But the chance for at least one very powerful storm remains.
Even though there may be slightly less hurricane activity this year, high winds and rain can still interrupt the power supply stationary cell towers rely on. As a result, cellphone carriers are fortifying their preparations with newer tools such as artificial intelligence and drones, so customers in the path of a hurricane can continue to communicate with loved ones, work from home and render aid.
Anthony Leone and his wife, Corinne Saunders, kayak in Kitty Hawk Bay, in North Carolina’s Outer Banks.
Anthony Leone/Anthony Leone
Anthony Leone/Anthony Leone
Strategies the companies are using
Verizon Wireless starts its hurricane response plans about a week before one is forecasted in an area, according to Srini Kalapala, Verizon’s senior vice president of wireless engineering and operations. Before a storm, Verizon uses drones to take pictures of a coverage area. It then takes more pictures after a storm to assess the damage. AI sends a precise location of the damage to engineers and technicians as they start their repairs.
“Hurricanes, especially — you don’t understand the damage until it’s fully done,” Kalapala said.
Verizon has an assortment of mobile tools should the company’s stationary cell towers give out during a hurricane. Many of them have animals for codenames; for example, COW stands for “cell on wheels,” and a HAWK, or “high altitude wireless kennewhat,” is a drone that can carry small towers to provide service from the sky. Kalapala said these tools have helped shave restoration times down to minutes and hours.
AT&T also makes preparations about a week before a hurricane. Its disaster response fleet includes boats, barges and helicopters that can transport team members and equipment through hard-to-reach areas including swamps and mountains after a disaster, according to Shannon Browning, the associate director of AT&T’s Network Disaster Recovery team. The company will often move equipment across the country as needed throughout the year, for events such as hurricanes, snowstorms and wildfires, he said.
“It used to be [that hurricanes] were very season-specific. And then you started to see that wildfire season crept into hurricane season,” he said.
As a result, the company has merged several of its disaster teams into one group, which has helped the company streamline its approach to public safety, Browning said.
Jon Freier, T-Mobile’s chief operating officer, said the company prepares for disasters three to five months in advance.
If the power goes out during a storm, it can take a few hours or days to restore service. In the meantime, customers get free satellite service, Freier said, and the company uses AI tools to automatically adjust antennas and conserve backup batteries when needed, which stretches the time period that they can be used.
“From my experience in these disasters, people will go without power a little bit longer, and they’re more patient,” Freier said. “But they want that smartphone to work, and to be connected.”
What some users have experienced
Leone, the North Carolina resident, has had several cell phone providers over the years, with different levels of performance during hurricanes and other major weather events. With his last carrier, getting regular service was a year-round issue; he could only get a signal on highways and at the beach. He has now been with AT&T for more than a decade, and he said his service has been fairly reliable during hurricanes.
“We usually get a text message saying, ‘Hey, there’s a storm coming,'” and if he loses service in a power outage, “It’s only a couple days, usually, before they fix it.”
But before civilians’ smartphones power up again, first responders’ needs have to be met. Many major companies prioritize and tailor networks specifically for first responders — including law enforcement, firefighters and paramedics.
Peter Antevy is the medical director for several fire departments in Broward County, Fla.. He said his teams rely on carriers’ cell and Wi-Fi services not just to make voice calls, but to conduct telemedicine appointments, send test results and transmit live updates from 911 dispatch centers to ambulances.
“There is a lot of data that goes back and forth,” he said.
So it’s important for company representatives to be in the room during local disaster response strategy meetings. Amy Weber, the chief of emergency medical services at the Galveston County Health District in Texas, said representatives from Verizon and AT&T come to her department’s meetings to plan what equipment they’ll send, and when.
“Communication is always a huge breakdown for first responders, because we get inundated with calls just from the service area, so putting us at top priority helps us be able to do our job,” Weber said.
Jackie Santillan, a doctoral student and content creator, said with her old provider, there was just one square foot of her home in the Houston suburbs where she could make a call. With her current provider, T-Mobile, she says not much has changed. She typically has to use Wi-Fi or go a half mile toward the highway to get better service — and that’s on a storm-free day, she said.
“I just have a lot of hurricane anxiety. I know that if something were to happen, we wouldn’t be able to reach out to anybody,” she said.
Santillan started a petition in May demanding a new cell tower in her neighborhood. It had almost 200 signatures as of Tuesday evening. T-Mobile said in a statement that areas with limited connectivity, like Santillan’s, are the company’s focus as it continues to expand.
“That’s why we continue to invest in network resilience and preparedness, including tower buildouts, 5G network upgrades and resiliency enhancements in communities across Texas, North Carolina and throughout the country,” the company said.
NPR Topics: News wp:paragraph
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