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Posted: 8/12/2017 3:55:51 PM EDT
Back in 2011 the tornadoes tore the SE US a new one.
It was after this that AR Jedi, praise be to his name, started the "Can't Fail" thread.
Amongst the stories posted from that time there was a photo that stuck in my mind.

It was of a cell phone tower bent over in an upside down J shape.

Well it just so happens that I have an engineer friend working on the AT&T implementation of First Net.
I want to share that picture with him to put on his desk as a reminder.

And I haven't been able to find that picture.  Not with arfcom search, not with google search.

So please, can you provide me with links to pictures of cell phone towers that have bent down to the superior forces of Nature?
I'm sure we've seen the opinion writings that the national First Net is going to eliminate the need for amateur communications.
I beg to differ!
Thank you in advance.
Link Posted: 8/12/2017 9:04:58 PM EDT
[#2]

Gurgle "storm damaged cell tower".
Link Posted: 8/12/2017 9:26:57 PM EDT
[#3]
Quoted:
I'm sure we've seen the opinion writings that the national First Net is going to eliminate the need for amateur communications.
I beg to differ!
Thank you in advance.
View Quote
While I agree that FirstNet is a joke, there are many places where amateur communications have not had a significant role in years, if not decades. Up in this neck of the woods they have lost their significance to an extremely robust state/local infrastructure and now essentially only get "busy work".

Amateur public service requirements continue to erode at a steady pace. Katrina driven reforms have lead to major cellular infrastructure hardening, and no public organization of any note goes anywhere without satellite broadband voice and data anymore.
Link Posted: 8/12/2017 11:46:44 PM EDT
[#4]
Discussion ForumsJump to Quoted PostQuote History
That's a good example.  Too new for the original but that's that idea.
Gurgling didn't work for me.
I was using tornado damage cell tower.
Switching to Bing I did find some more pictures from a Magnolia 2010 tornado.
But not the one I saw posted here.  That picture may have gotten swallowed by the Photobucket change in policy.
Here's a picture from Magnolia 2010:
Link Posted: 8/13/2017 7:31:14 PM EDT
[#5]
Just for fun,...google -" burning cell tower "
Link Posted: 8/15/2017 7:11:24 PM EDT
[#6]
Post-hurricane.

Attachment Attached File
Link Posted: 8/15/2017 8:13:11 PM EDT
[#7]
I can't stream video to my phone with part 97 technology and legality should be allowed to do anything with PII.

Firstnet will be a great asset to the country, that said it will never replace push to talk comms
Link Posted: 8/15/2017 8:20:48 PM EDT
[#8]
Losing one, two, or three towers will not kill the whole Firstnet network.  Show me areas where entire clusters of towers covering county sized sreas have been wiped out, then you'll have some concern.

Tower coverage overlaps for a reason. 

Eta: there are also new wind loading and structural requirements for towers being implemented (not necessarily because of Firstnet, but at the same time)
Link Posted: 8/15/2017 9:48:40 PM EDT
[#9]
How's this?

RC East, 2012
Attachment Attached File
Link Posted: 8/16/2017 7:49:59 AM EDT
[#10]
AT&T has had only one cell tower in our county of 15,000 people.
This not the only county in southwestern Virginia where other cell phone companies have not been willing to make the infrastructure investment for good business reasons.
Firstnet will need to include multiple providers once they move more than 10 miles from an interstate.

Here's an example of where a cluster of towers got wiped leaving no coverage: Joplin Mo.
And the majority are still on a nice SW to NE line.
One shot can get them all
And then there was Katrina.  Pretty much wiped out cell coverage for the lower part of the state.

I believe that hams need to practice emergency antenna raising in this decade every bit as much a message passing.

Discussion ForumsJump to Quoted PostQuote History
Quoted:
Losing one, two, or three towers will not kill the whole Firstnet network.  Show me areas where entire clusters of towers covering county sized sreas have been wiped out, then you'll have some concern.

Tower coverage overlaps for a reason. 

Eta: there are also new wind loading and structural requirements for towers being implemented (not necessarily because of Firstnet, but at the same time)
View Quote
Link Posted: 8/16/2017 9:01:23 AM EDT
[#11]
I'm sure once first net gets spun up the Virginia communication cache will get some COWs.

There always needs to be a redundant system for communication but there still needs to be invocation and progress.
Link Posted: 8/16/2017 10:46:25 AM EDT
[#12]
Discussion ForumsJump to Quoted PostQuote History
Quoted:
AT&T has had only one cell tower in our county of 15,000 people.
This not the only county in southwestern Virginia where other cell phone companies have not been willing to make the infrastructure investment for good business reasons.
Firstnet will need to include multiple providers once they move more than 10 miles from an interstate.

Here's an example of where a cluster of towers got wiped leaving no coverage: Joplin Mo.
And the majority are still on a nice SW to NE line.
One shot can get them all
And then there was Katrina.  Pretty much wiped out cell coverage for the lower part of the state.

I believe that hams need to practice emergency antenna raising in this decade every bit as much a message passing.
View Quote
I guess I am missing something in your example, are you saying every tower in Joplin got wiped out at once during a storm or could?
Link Posted: 8/16/2017 11:57:28 AM EDT
[#13]
Discussion ForumsJump to Quoted PostQuote History
Quoted:
I guess I am missing something in your example, are you saying every tower in Joplin got wiped out at once during a storm or could?
View Quote
Caveat: I wasn't there.  I was living just east of St. Louis at the time.  Reports and images are easy to find, Joplin 2011.
Here is one report from the Mo DPS Report that there are fifty cell sites that are off the network. Ten of these sites are off the network due to damage.

And another report: cell phone communications were spotty due to 17 toppled phone towers.
When storms like the wrath of tornadoes that swept across the SE 7 years ago, or Rita or Sandy or Katrina or ... happen 2 or 3 spare towers a couple of days later aren't going to resolve all the problems.
And stronger towers are going to help.  Look at the details of destruction.
"In one of the medical arts parking lot just west of St John’s Hospital, 200 to 300 pound concrete parking stops rebarred into the asphalt were lifted and tossed from 30 to 60 yards."

First Net or not, I say that the amateur radio community that wants to be ready to help needs to:
1-have distributed stocks of easy to deploy VHF/HF antennas as relevant to your areas.
2-practice grabbing batteries out of cars (did you put vice grips in your kit?).
3-setting up antennas by sticking up a pole and guy wires and hooking up.

Because for the first day after a major event your Emergency manager is going to need communications.
Once AT&T/whoever + your state/federal emergency ops are rolling then we may be packing up our radios and volunteering to manage recharging batteries for the first responders.
Or cleaning & cooking for them.  
First we need a plan for when their and our Plan A to use the local EOC fails.  Because its not there anymore.
And we to make that plan in coordination with your local Emergency Manager.
Show them with a demo what you can do with nothing more than what you can pull out of your caches of gear.
Be relevant to the effort to return to normal or expect to be a victim receiving services.
Link Posted: 8/16/2017 11:26:50 PM EDT
[#14]
The problem with Katrina was that phone lines all routed to New Orleans, where servers were underwater.  It
took a while to get it all set up going through Lafayette.  I don't understand all this, just what I was told by
people that were supposed to know.

Also, during hurricane evac cell systems are totally overwhelmed.  Everyone is calling everyone else, families
and friends traveling together in separate cars are calling each other, calling to see if anyone can see why
traffic is totally stalled, where are they going to stop for gas, or food, trying to call every hotel in the state to
book a room, etc.  Then during and after, people are trying to call family and each other to see if they are
OK, where are they, yada yada.  If it works at all.

The cell system is not designed to take that kind of load.  Even it is working.
Link Posted: 8/17/2017 12:51:27 AM EDT
[#15]
FEMA intentionally cutting phone lines didn't help any with Katrina, either.

I know the emergency services people travel with their own satellite gear, etc, but I've noticed they generally don't do any outreach or make stuff public.

It's incredibly rare, but I know in a few areas (including my own) during communications blackouts there's been your typically fuddy-duddy
older hams with 2M mobile rigs stationed at specific malls, walmarts etc and they've broadcast the locations on local radio as 911 access points.

I hear the guys in my AO practice this about once a month, and it's on the statewide interlink. They fumble a little bit but clearly get the job
done and they're connecting a lot of sites. Pretty much every EOC and major hospital in the state.

As far as first responders goes, it kills me when they try to set up fancy infrastructure that fails repeatedly. In my area at least,
when things get serious and go sideways, they pop back up on the single VHF FM frequency they maintain and of course it always works.
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